Did this as the first song from the album because it was generating the most correspondence – or at least the refrain at the end was. Pretty convinced it’s “Thirty Airbus…” (i.e. supporters) so what are your thoughts on what that bit means in the context of the song? I have mine.
As for the location of the “Town End seats”, I asked Dave from welsh-football.net, and he suggested that there’s an obvious, seated Town End at Aberystwyth, so it could it be Park Avenue?
As ever, all comments on the transcribed lyrics, all thoughts on the content, and all general reviews of the song, are very welcome. Over to you…
26 February 2022
Paul f
Airbus would presumably refer to the works football team from Broughton.
26 February 2022
EXXO
Indeed. During a pre-season friendly at the Racecourse Ground, Pirx?
26 February 2022
That chiseller idris
Definitely 30 Airbus to these ears. Beautiful song. Probably the only HMHB song I can think of with no humour and all the more striking because of it. As I suspect will be the case with many if us, I’ve seen family members go through this so it really resonates.
Also, it almost feels like we’re revisting Vince and Constance a few years on, which to me makes it a sequel not only to Bain of Constance but also part of a trilogy with Them’s The Vagaries.
26 February 2022
poopleby
To me it feels like Harsh Times four years on and therefore four years worse.
26 February 2022
Duke of westmInster
Seems more like a companion piece to Terminus to me.
Could it be…”And we’re back in The Lanes”. Either shopping area (loads of them all over the country) or just a place known as The Lanes. The memory seems to a shaft of light specific recollection about a place and “the lanes” seems to be too vague for this purpose.
26 February 2022
Woodnoggin
I thought it was either “Thirty Airbus” or “Thirty year bus”. Neither made sense to me. My partner suggested “Third-tier bus”, as ridden by supporters of a third tier football team, but that would make for an odd stress on the word “tier”.
26 February 2022
dr Desperate
No doubt it’s Airbus UK Broughton FC, originally the works team of the factory where the wings of the Airbus airliner are made. Far be it from me to disagree with the editor of Welsh Football Magazine over a Welsh football matter, but I’d be inclined to think that the ‘town end’ might be at Y Morfa, Conwy Utd (now Conwy Borough)’s ground. Airbus UK played their first two matches after promotion to the Cymru Premier in 2004 there, as their own ground couldn’t be brought up to league standards in time. The ‘We All Stand Together’ non-league football website describes a mural painted on the stand behind Conwy’s “town end goal” – one imagines a small contingent of Wingmakers fans making a nuisance of themselves there.
26 February 2022
CARRIE ANNE
Roger tells me that ‘Ah, Sweet Mystery Of Life’ was a MacDonald/Eddy duet.
Aber beat Airbus 5-3 on Valentines Day 2020 (there’s an S4C highlights of the game on that Youtube). Not clear where the Town End seats are (as there is no “Town End” description for any part of the ground on the club’s website) but maybe it is by the bus depot end. In any event, there look to be not much more than about 30 people in total in the stadium once staff are excluded and the nearest I could see to anyone giving it the big un is a young lad clapping after Airbus get a second goal. I’d be surprised if Airbus take 30 to away games as far away as Aber (though that may be part of the point I suppose).
Perhaps we should be looking at other stadia for Town End seats. Prenton Park is a candidate but can’t find details of an Airbus game.
26 February 2022
Pirx The Purist
“Indeed. During a pre-season friendly at the Racecourse Ground, Pirx?”
No, that end – although the nearer to the town centre – has never been known as that. It was always known as ‘The Crispin Lane End’ or (with staggering originality) ‘The Kop’.
It included one of the oddest football-ground structures of all time, namely the balcony of the former Majestic Cinema re-purposed as a small stand, extending for about a quarter of the width of the end. The stand was known colloquially as ‘The Busfield’ (pronounced ‘Bush-field’) after the local trader whose advertisement featured across the front of it for years. It was in use from about 1961 to its being condemned as a fire hazard in about 1976. It stayed in place until that end of the ground was revamped in about 1978. It was useful for sheltering under when watching a dull game against Bury on a November evening.
I can’t help with the meaning in the lyrics because I’m still waiting for my copy to turn up.
26 February 2022
dr Desperate
Post 10 refers to post 8 of course, not 9 (though to cause further cross-post confusion, I’ll just mention that ‘Ah, Sweet Mystery Of Life’ was quoted by Madeline Kahn in ‘Young Frankenstein’ in certain circumstances). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E81ICJywqwg
26 February 2022
dr Desperate
I understand Airbus have an unusual feature at the own ground, The Airfield: three retracting floodlights, as the pitch is adjacent to an operational runway.
26 February 2022
Exxo
Yes those to whom ’30 Airbus’ makes no sense, that is how we refer to numbers of football supporters. “There was four thousand Boreham Wood at Everton even though their home crowd is four hundred” sort of thing.
Thanks Pirx. Wish I’d researched properly now. And no its not Tranmere as there’s been no Airbus game there and the Town End Paddock is not the away end. Nigel watches the Welsh league on welsh telly so yes the Duke and Doc have likely options there. If there is a link with the title, which there probably is (in fact the title is what makes it a not complete non-sequitur), then of course the Town End may well be the home end that the idiots think they have somehow “taken” by slipping the escort.
I had a mate who quit supporting Chester (City, as was) many years ago to start following Airbus. He never mentioned giving it the big ‘un with the Broughton Ultras.
26 February 2022
parsfan
On train on way home after another of the results of a lifetime. Where I was will have no relevance to the song but we have/had a ”town end” and “Cowden end”, neither of which will be seen mentioned on any club website. Like most clubs it’s all former player and direction based nomenclature these days.
Must admit I’d totally forgotten that Airbus existed as a football team (coverage of Welsh football being fairly non-existent here in Ireland), and so had half-convinced myself that the lyric related to Aarhus until a mate of mine in Bristol reminded me about them. On re-listening, it’s definitely Airbus. I have no idea which ground the Town End seats are in, but the Conwy theory sounds more plausible than most to me, given the relative proximity to the Wirral.
26 February 2022
Exxo
@Duke – for me “back in the lanes” works perfectly in that verse as a metaphor for the moments of lucidity and awareness, with a double resonance for those non-drivers who are occasionally passengers in octagenarian parents’ cars.
26 February 2022
Mr.X
I was watching Airbus U.K. Broughton F.C’s 3-0 win over Llanidloes Town yesterday at The Airfield. Attendance 144, which is well below average but understandable considering the Six Nations being on and the timing of the match along with the opposition.
The manager Steve O’Shaughnessy, who made 202 Football League appearances between 1984 and 1994, has been one of my best mates since he became player-manager at Flexsys Cefn Druids in the summer of 2001. I followed Druids home and away along with training with the team when I was a teenager. In fact, Shaughssa was my lift to and from the game yesterday.
Airbus are currently top of the Cymru North by three points with a game in a hand over Llandudno. They were controversially relegated on points per game during as the Pandemic hit.
Only the Welsh Premier had a season in 2020-21 so there was no opportunity to win promotion back until now.
27 February 2022
Paul f
@Mr X – how often does your mate get asked about his century in 35 minutes?
27 February 2022
Voltaroland gift
After about 3 listens I get the image of a woman admitting that she’s now reached an age where the needs of her dependant have grown too much for her to manage alone & now he needs adult social care. Whether it’s Son or Husband I don’t know.
Was he a bit of a football ‘lad’ who took a knock to the head on an away day?
27 February 2022
Chris The Siteowner
I see it something like that. The song up until the final part is about her, then the ending is what’s going on in his head.
27 February 2022
Woodnoggin
I love how the drums kick in at “and we’re back in The Lanes”, as memories of better days come flooding back. Great composition.
27 February 2022
The moth
May not be this, but the country roads between Meols and Frankby/Greasby are known as ‘the lanes’ by my Hoylake rellos. They went walking and cycling there back in the day. Not so now – choked with traffic.
27 February 2022
CARRIE ANNE
A woman is having to put her husband into a home because his dementia is becoming too much to cope with. In his earlier days, he was involved in Welsh Non-League football hooliganism and he has become agitated/excited because he’s heard of some trouble at the weekend involving fans of Airbus UK and A.N. Other unspecified team. This ‘incident’ has only manifested in his own mind of course. He has finally found the madness of the disease. Airbus UK fans would be highly unlikely to cause any trouble, and possibly never taken 30 fans anywhere. Both heart breaking and humorous for those caring for him, which I guess matches our own experience of this awful illness.
27 February 2022
dr Desperate
That all makes sense, @CA. The title, with typical ingenuity, shifts its meaning to fit all of those scenarios, each implying escape (either voluntary or otherwise) from some form of control. First the hooligan evading the police escort on the way from the station to the ground; then the husband losing control of his intellect; then the wife losing the husband that kept her steady and the husband his caring wife; and finally the care home resident lashing out at his perceived tormentors. Many of us will have witnessed at least some parts of this sequence at first hand; some may even feel the dread of it happening to ourselves.
27 February 2022
EXXO
Pretty much all the way I hear it, Chris, Karen & John, and all the more so because I have personaly heard ‘slipping the escort’ used as a football fan’s witty way of saying they had got away from the attention of their spouse (for a short period).
Regarding the final chant, I would add that it’s not necessarily something he’s personally experienced or imagined, but could be a version of something he’s seen on telly. And that we could be looking at a “Bugger Bognor” type scenario.
27 February 2022
EXXO
Hmm. Sometimes you look at what someone else would find if they google something that you’ve just written. Apparently the stories we were told that they were George V’s famous last words are no longer in circulation, no longer at all famous. Fake news.
27 February 2022
Brian Damage
While we are discussing various lower- and non-league ends, please could someone address why Awkward Sean goes in the Home End? My experience of Prenton Park is limited to celebrating promotion there with Bury so I will be happy to be enlightened.
We played pool, he would arrange beer mats into a tower. That’s him there Stood at the back Next to Anthony Power (?) Awkward Sean Awkward Sean Semtex Sean Home End Sean
27 February 2022
EXXO
He’s so eccentric that he goes on aways and goes in the home end, on his own. Probably with no ill intent.
Three Biscuiteers got 20 points each in the last round of Fantasy Biscuitball League because we anticipated correctly that “that’s him there…” was intended for gesture at gigs.
27 February 2022
EXXO
40 points, even.
27 February 2022
TRANSIT FULL OF keith
Anthony Power? The murdered lingerie tycoon? (Google it. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.)
27 February 2022
dr Desperate
More likely the British Olympic fencer, I’d imagine.
27 February 2022
Duke of westminster
There’s an interesting dialogue between the melody of the high point to which the song builds (“Ah sweet mystery of life”) and that in Say Hello and Wave Goodbye (“take your hands off me”). The melodic progression in both is almost (a couple of extra notes in STE) identical.
In STE, the finding and losing seems like it is at the end of a near lifelong relationship in which he held her steady and she is losing him for the second time (after the senility loss) as he goes to a home with, perhaps, a third loss when he dies in the future. In SHAWG, the finding and losing in the relationship is at the opposite end of the spectrum – two people who never knew each other and bringing it to an end as an act of empowerment.
Could almost be a songwriting exercise – what about giving the same emotional interest to an elderly couple in a song as pop songs usually give to young people.
27 February 2022
Superbreeze bex
Have to say in my years watching Aberystwyth Town, I never heard mention of the Town End (which might indeed be the bus end)
27 February 2022
bobbybottler
Home End Sean is 100% referring to a lone wolf going into the wrong end on away days.
One of the other things I agree 100% with is Carrie Anne’s interpretation of 30 Airbus etc
But all I really came here to say was that Elm Park had a Town End, and I happily watched a load (more than 30) of Tranmere fans grumpily watch a 0-0 draw in the 94/95 play-off semi final
28 February 2022
Poopleby
Exxo, @31, depending upon who was teaching history at the time George V’s last words, as told to me, were either “Bugger Bognor” or “How is the empire?” I suspect neither is correct and Wikipedia say his final words were “God damn you”, before he was euthanased. Which brings me to my point. Is STE darker than we have been considering? Losing him twice and the reference to the needle then a conduct report. Is she letting him go for good?
28 February 2022
cream cheese and chives
A brilliant portrait of a woman reaching the point when she realises that she alone cannot provide the care needed for her other half. Care at home is moving to care somewhere else. Her concern about the name in his shirt reflects worries about institutional laundries and the mixed reports at progress meetings confirm that he is no longer to be at home. The ‘thirty Airbus’ comes directly after she finally tracks him down in his new abode. Her joy and relief at finding him in his new place is cut short when he shares his news about the presence of thirty Airbus. Where this comes from he/she does not know but he will be keen to share the news with his wife. Her silence demonstrates just how wide the gap between them has now become; the gap that never used to exist.
28 February 2022
John
After a recent visit to Prenton Park to watch Swindon get rather badly beaten, I was reminded by some very affable Tranmere supporters that there is still a residual bitterness about an abandoned game at the County Ground in 1992 when we were 0-2 down. To further anger, we won the rearranged game.
One of our ends is The Town End. I’m wondering if there’s a connection but I’m buggered if I can see it.
28 February 2022
A bore in superdry
John – I went to that one, December 1992, a lovely sunny afternoon. I think Hoddle was playing and it was passing him by.
Floodlights packed up in the second half. Away fans were offered complementary tickets for the rearranged game. Good times.
28 February 2022
Burly Physio
@John #42. I was at the game. A very long way to go without a single shot on target, made it home to The Valleys at 4am. Second cheapest Bovril in League 2 though. I was at the floodlight failure game in 92 too. We were getting slaughtered so a very fortuitous time for a fuse to blow. I’ve actually just come on here to ask how one goes about nominating a song for a Novello Award. These lyrics are the most moving account of living as a carer of a dementia sufferer.
28 February 2022
Willshed
Llanelli AFC have a Town End at Stebonheath to this day, and we’ve played Airbus on a few occasions in our glory days in the WPL – but alas the said area is behind the goals and home to a dilapidated all-weather training area. Can’t recall Airbus bring much of a crowd either – John Hulse’s Rhyl were by far the noisy North Walian neighbours back then, even attending midweeks in numbers with their skull and crossbones flag and all that.
28 February 2022
Banana custard
Thanks as ever for being a genius Chris.
I’m with the Duke (and potentially his good lady wife) … suspect it’s “The Lanes”. I’d visualised this as the Brighton Lanes … but could be anywhere.
I think this is an astonishing song … musical and lyrically. I’m getting it as being about an old lady with declining husband with only patches of sunlight. Will need to listen a bit more to get it all – but wanted to comment on the quality of the tune here. They’ve always been good musically – but there’s new depths and chord tricks here I think. Reminded me a bit of the poignancy of Dirty Old Town. Brilliant stuff.
1 March 2022
Pirx The Purist
@Audrey’s euphemisms (comment #20). There’s not much more coverage of it here either. The BBC’s sports programmes/web pages all but ignore it; the two self-styled ‘National Newspapers of Wales’ (i.e., the Western Mail, which has no circulation worth speaking of north of Aberystwyth; and the Daily Post, which has no circulation worth speaking of south of Aberystwyth) consider it almost beneath their notice; and S4C’s Sgorio, which used to be on at peak time on a Monday evening when it was showing highlights from Serie A and La Liga, has been shunted off to nearly midnight now it covers only our own league.
1 March 2022
Gordo
just like with ‘TNS in the blob mob-handed’ (This One’s For Now) ’30 Airbus giving it the big-un in the town end seats’ is definitely from Nigel’s imagination of a world where Cymru Premier League teams have ultras. When I saw Airbus play TNS a few years back it was the only game I’ve ever been to where the half-time whistle was greeted by complete silence from the entire ‘crowd’
1 March 2022
woodnoggin
This song has been bouncing round my head for days. Despite its sadness, it’s the one I’ve listened to most from the album so far, and not just because I was trying to figure out what he’s singing at the end. The poignant lyrics, the gradual build-up to the Town End seats singalong, some lovely alliteration (apart, adrift, alone, afraid, ahead) – brilliant stuff.
1 March 2022
Guts
And now he’s washed and dressed and ready To keep him safe she’ll face the hurt And if she could hold that needle steady She could sew his name into his shirt”
I don’t really have much to add, but this simple lyric painted such a vivid picture of an old lady breaking down while trying to sort her husbands stuff out that it was like a punch in the bollocks and I think it’s amazing.
1 March 2022
Pirx The Purist
“Just for enquiring She’ll get a free Parker pen”
Anyone explain this reference to me (assuming it has any significance at all)?
An astonishing song. Although there’s long been an elegiac element to NB’s lyrics (think the chorus of ‘Jelutong’, for example), maintaining it for a whole song and at such depth (OoD similarly) is a mark of his complete maturity as a songwriter.
2 March 2022
Lamper
@pirx I think it refers to the free gifts given as inducements to respond to adverts for life insurance, annuities and the like in weekly magazines.
2 March 2022
EXXO
Afternoon TV. Michael Parkinson getting old folks to cough up a fee every month to end up with a fixed sum to cover their funeral expenses. You get a free pen just for enquiring.
Dunno why they didn’t carry on using June Whitfield when she died, just to emphasise the point. I mean her family could have done with the cash to cover the funeral expenses.
2 March 2022
paul f
And it always is a Parker pen for some reason. Perhaps people in that demographic need the reassurance of a brand name they recognise from their youth.
2 March 2022
Janet from accounts
Free Parker pen (just for enquiring) at 44s into this old advert.
To me the ’30 Airbus…’ lines is a happy memory. Maybe he was involved or just witnessed 30 of his teams fans giving it big ‘un in the town end seats…Ties in with emotion content of the song that way. Then the title would then relate to this moment, his memory going missing and his wife losing him too. Very good song indeed. Also agree that the choice of Airbus is because you’re probably not going to get much hooliganism from them so is a funny image.
2 March 2022
Pirx The Purist
Thanks, all. I thought that was what it was (I’ve been getting guff like that through the post since I was about 47).
2 March 2022
Hoylake Gebrselassie
This is a wonderful song, but I couldn’t quite make the chant at the end fit with the rest until I found myself thinking about it this way:
There are studies that show how music and singing can awaken the memory of patients with dementia. So could it be that this couple used to attend matches together? And that “the lanes” are the backroads and side streets that they took to “slip the escort”. And that the chant is one they sang together then, and sing together now – a mutual memory?
3 March 2022
third rate les
Exxo – thanks for pointing out that “slipping the escort” is joke term for escaping the wife. My football banter days were well before marriage (or indeed girlfriends), but that makes a lot of sense.
I like to think the Airbus is a glorious moment of shared lucidity (perhaps even a fond shared memory of that time they swerved the Checkatrade), but the sheer obscurity of it really suggests to me that it’s a lapse back into isolation – a bit like Vince’s rambles in Bain of Constance but much more painful.
3 March 2022
EXXO
I wouldn’t say a joke term. A witty* comment that I’ve heard once or twice from football mates and I suspect NB will have heard it more than that.
*I’ve chosen the word generously because in isolation, it’s just funny rather than misogynistic. Obviously there’s a chance that other so-called banter might indicate that the person was a bit of a misogynist. In which case it would definitely seem less witty.
3 March 2022
Jeff dreadnought
Thanks everyone who’s helped explained the 30 Airbus chorus, which would otherwise have remained a mystery to me.
It would be nice to think it was a happy memory shared, but it doesn’t feel like that kind of song to me. Whether it’s a memory of his football hooligan days or something he may have seen on telly, it feels like a painful reminder that she’s losing him.
This was song that when I was first listening to the album stopped me in my tracks – especially the line about sewing his name into his shirt.
3 March 2022
Quickben
Having listened to it a number of times, it definitely has the feel of being a companion piece to Terminus, though in some ways it is darker and more sombre. Very much agree it is a farewell to a loved one who she can no longer care for and nurse adequately and she is worrying she may be seen as callous and uncaring; an evil nurse not feeding him properly. The other reading that theme lent itself to was of a woman who loved him enough to give him a final release via an overdose, which again would certainly prompt social judgement as an evil nurse. It feels ambiguous, perhaps deliberately so but once again NB paints something so evocative through his words – chapeau..
3 March 2022
Mr.X
@Paul F Different Steve O’Shaughnessy from the Cricketer, who is now a First Class Umpire.
Fun fact, the “century” Steve O’Shaughnessy scored was later not classed as the quickest ever first class hundred as it was in contrived circumstances. David Gower was bowling at one end along with one Test wonder, 1986-87 Ashes winner and former Head Selector, James Whittaker at the other for Leicestershire.
The difference with this one and Glen Chapple’s hundred v Glamorgan at Old Trafford is, in my opinion, negligible as that was also undoubtedly in contrived circumstances but not according to the record books.
This one was top scorer for Rochdale in 1989-90, when the Dale reached the F.A. Cup Fifth Round for the first time. He once also scored two goals in a game against Tranmere Rovers in Division Four at Spotland.
3 March 2022
Christie Malry
I think there’s a connection to be made between ‘the lanes’ here as a the scene of a moment of emotional reconnection and temporary escape from memory loss, and the two Lanes (Lingham and Limbo) in ‘Oblong of Dreams’ which represent escape from all the crap if everyday life.
3 March 2022
ALICE van der meer
No doubt NB10 is having a little smirk right now as we work out which Steve O’S he means.
3 March 2022
paul F
Yes, I’d gathered it wasn’t THAT Steve O’Shaughnessy, but wondered how frequently the man himself has to make that clear. But the connection sent me on a wiki safari where I was delighted to learn that if the century were considered genuine, it equalled a record held since 1920 by Percy Fender (a major character in the Bodyline TV series recently discussed here) and he received a congratulatory telegram afterwards from the 91 year old Fender.
3 March 2022
EXXO
Interesting that we’ve had more comments about its thematic connection to Terminus and Umberstone than to Bane of Constance, which not only is about dementia but also uses the same technique of the disconnected, obsessive chant from the dementia victim at the end.
MIdge Ure Looks Like a Milk Thief = Thirty Airbus Givin it the Big ‘un
3 March 2022
ThAt chiseller, iDRIS
Re: #68
I can remember whether I posted on this thread or the general album discussion but I definitely see this as more of a continuation of Bain of Constance than the others. I always took Harsh Times… to be about depression. There’s a nugget of hope in the lyric and the narrator seems to be trying to coax a smile out of Geraldine with the Large Hadron Collider joke. Obviously, either condition could manifest itself in the way described in the song but it feels to me like there’s a possibility of recovery which is what makes it such a wonderful, and to me rather comforting, song. Terminus, I see as more about the general effects of aging (delayed recovery from exercise, hernias, various other instances of ‘trouble down below’) with a peppering of references to empty nest syndrome (pushchair related confrontations, hands I once held no longer there.) which lifts it above other songs on the same topic. Depending on my mood, I can find it incredibly sad, or mildly uplifting as the character comes to terms with his situation and finds a new, possibly final, sense of liberation.
The characters in STE, on the other hand, could easily be Vince and Constance 8 years on, with the strange monologues having given way to quiz night outbursts and disorientated football chants. If it’s deliberate, it’s an amazing feat and it will certainly change the way I listen to BoC once TVY moves from constant rotation to shuffle.
3 March 2022
10 Pence Off Lenor
Clearly two references here.
1/ The 30 Airbus were giving it the big un in town then there is a sentence break followed by
2/ A plea to make football grounds all standing – End Seats
Clever undoubtedly but nothing much gets by me
3 March 2022
Drizzle
Ruthin Town, who are in the same league as Airbus UK Broughton, have a shed at one end which seats approx 30
3 March 2022
DUKE OF WESTMINSTER
I know others have read Bane of Constance as being about Vince’s dementia (like STE) and while there’s no wrong answer (save for the ones you would hear me lambast if you accepted a ride inside my head), I do not understand why people interpret it that way. Briefly, the evidence (or some of it, at least) for Vince not being a dementia sufferer includes:
1. the list of things referred to by Vince provides a lucid response to the question asked (i.e. it attempts to answer the specific question asked) so if there is any dementia involved it is not at an advanced stage in which language comprehension and formulation is lost;
2. Vince clearly recognises that the sort of information currently in his mind is not the sort of thing that Constance would be genuinely interested in (“I wold not blame you in the least if you cut short the flight”) – such insight is not consistent with advanced dementia;
3. Vince appreciates that the passing thoughts sparking through his mind are likely to be different if Constance takes another flight – again, the kind of insight not to be expected from someone with significant mental impairment from dementia;
4. The fact that Constance is asking the question to Vince about needing to know an answer as to what is on Vince’s mind because “We can’t continue in this way” suggests she is seeking information from him that will resolve their relationship problems – while that is consistent with the idea of her wanting get a better idea of what Vince thinks, it would be a very strange thing to ask of someone with dementia; and
5. the song works as a funny conceit if it is about Constance being keen to deepen the relationship by knowing everything about what Vince is thinking and Vince deflating the romantic intent by listing a series of maddeningly irrelevant nonsense rather than details about his feelings, but it does not work if it is about a woman pressing someone suffering from dementia about his mental inadequacies and memory problems – what’s funny about that, where would the pathos be?.
4 March 2022
EXXO
Perhaps the songwriter has moved on in his understanding of the issue, and finds a bit less comedy in it than eight years ago? I can’t remember (appropriately enough) if NB ever has clarified to me that the song was about dementia, but I do remember that I already thought it was when Geoff Davies clarified to Mick (Bobby Svarc) that it was.
4 March 2022
Jeff dReadnOught
Seems to me the main difference is Bain of Constance is more from the point of view of the sufferer while STE is more from the point of view of the carer.
Both manage to be deeply moving while not being in the slightest bit sentimental.
4 March 2022
DUKE OF WESTMINSTER
The furthest I’d be prepared to go (if someone gave me a really hard push) about Vince’s condition is that perhaps he could be in some kind of locked-in syndrome listening to Constance’s question and only able to answer with his internal thoughts. Even that, though, does not work as well in terms of the concept of the song as a scenario in which Vince has no relevant medical condition – i.e. the song is about the gulf between the hoped for internal thoughts of a lover and the random nonsense reality. If he has something like locked in syndrome then the idea is that Constance is telling Vince he has to reveal to her what she is thinking otherwise there needs to be changes and he responds with a series of unconnected strange things as internal thoughts. Not a very satisfying song idea. In any event, though, even that does not fit well with Vince’s comment about not blaming Constance if she cuts short the flight which seems to suggest Vince speaking as though he expects Constance to hear what he is saying and then to react.
4 March 2022
clown in a yaris
This song is completely devoid of everything i love about HMHB. Hate it .Have to skip it every time. It could have won me over if it was done in a more poetic and less literal way.
4 March 2022
Pirx The Purist
Each to his own, I suppose, but I think that – lyrics and music taken together – this may be the most ‘complete’ song they’ve ever done. Along with OoD, this is a sure-fire favourite for next years LFC.
4 March 2022
I, problem chimp
I’m interested by the ‘at last I’ve found you!’ line – is it the woman speaking – overjoyed that there is a ray of occasional sunshine and her beloved is at least momentarily back? Is it (given it’s a little buried in the background and the references to songs from their past) a memory of the beginning of their relationship surfacing which could therefore be uttered by either or both? Or is it the man, heartbreakingly seemingly lucid again, but actually remembering only a spot of Welsh football aggro? As I wrote in the general chat, there’s enough structurally in both STE and OOD to work against having to see them as completely straight(forward) and therefore ‘anti-HMHB’ tracks, even if they do stand out against the majority of the band’s work…
5 March 2022
EXXO
Whose voice it is – he, her, omniscient narrator, unreliable narrator, Nigel Blackwell, etc, is up to you. But what has been found by that voice is indisputably the credo set out in the entire lyrics of ‘Sweet Mystery of Life.’
“Ah! I know at last the secret of it all; All the longing, seeking, striving, waiting, yearning The burning hopes, the joy and idle tears that fall! For ’tis love, and love alone, the world is seeking, And ’tis love, and love alone, that can repay! ‘Tis the answer, ’tis the end and all of living For it is love alone that rules for aye! Love, and love alone, the world is seeking, For ’tis love, and love alone, that can repay! ‘Tis the answer, ’tis the end and all of living For it is love alone that rules for aye!
5 March 2022
clown in a yaris
STE couldn’t hold a candle to OoD. OoD is a near master piece, beautiful and poetic in its imagery, definitely the best track on the album. I would put this as a more likely contender for the LFC. But, as someone once said, each to their own.
7 March 2022
Nagasaki Shinpads
I too think this is the best song on TVY..poignant and heartbreaking in its entirety.
Was thinking that “The Lanes” reference possibly a reference to the name of the Care Home linked to lucid episodes from Memory Lane(s)?
7 March 2022
John Anderson
I’ve had a while to digest the album and, like most of you, I’m thoroughly enjoying it. The standouts for me are In A Suffolk Ditch, Persian Rug Sale At The URC, Grafting Haddock In The George, Awkward Sean, Slipping The Escort and Midnight Mass Murder. I can’t wait to hear some or all of these songs performed live in Nottingham later this month.
“What about the final track?” I hear you cry. Don’t get me wrong it’s very good indeed but, from a totally subjective point of view, I like an HMHB song which contains lines and observations to which I can personally relate; coats on newel posts, once a year churchgoers, Chicory Tip, the hatred of continuity announcers, frustrated country singers; that sort of thing.
Obviously Nigel is a wonderfully evocative songwriter and fiercely proud of his local area but Oblong Of Dreams is so intensely personal to him that I find myself rather cast adrift from the references. I’m from Guildford and have only been to The Wirral twice (once for a game at Prenton Park and once for a party in Noctorum) so, lovely and heartfelt though the words are, it doesn’t really speak to me.
Overall I would like to doff my hat to Neil whose bass playing is magnificent throughout and seems to do most of the heavy lifting on this record. He’s up there with Steve Hanley and Peter Hook as a bassist around whom everything else falls into place. I think the elegaic Slipping The Escort is probably the musical highlight of the album, it reminds me of early Procol Harum, a band I’ve always loved (RIP Gary Brooker) and while thankfully I have no personal experience of the subject matter, the tale is beautifully told and should resonate with anyone.
This may not be a popular opinion, but I must say I find the sequencing of the tracks a little odd. The first eight of the fourteen songs make up only 44% of the running time, while the final three account for nearly a third of it. There are a trio of very short songs at the core, at least one of which I might have placed before OOD with STE put into the middle section. I think having STE and OOD back to back at the end makes the tail a little hard to digest, with the two longest and most conceptually demanding tracks side by side.
Minor quibbles though and, as I say, thoroughly subjective. It’s a brilliant record and yet another source of deep joy in a bleak world, from a band whose levels of consistency continue to be astonishingly high.
7 March 2022
EXXO
Well I doubt you’ll get all of your new favourites in Notts, John. Not unless you have time to practise keyboards with the band for Slipping the Escort
Meanwhile, you’ve only been to two places on the Wirral and if you’d said either you’d have won the place name bingo with closest to Woodchurch (and the estate, and the daffodils up by the school)!!
7 March 2022
cream cheese and chives
@ John Anderson Interesting point . The bit that grabbed me from the start was the poor soul about whom NB was unsure of their destination-food bank, pharmacy, field track or indecency. It might just be me but that summed up several characters who roam the streets where I am. Like many others I think Oblong is a masterpiece and coupled with Slipping The Escort makes for a fantastic finale to a belter of an lp. Tickets ordered for Nottingham, I fancy Oblong might make the playlist but not Escort. Suffolk Ditch most likely will I would guess.
7 March 2022
DUKE OF WESTMINSTER
@ John Anderson – while the specifics of OoD are particular to places in Wirral, the sentiments are universal aren’t they? Giving significance to the every day in ordinary people’s lives (even in Guildford), the things that “flash upon that inward eye” – both the depressing and the uplifting.
7 March 2022
Janet from accounts
So not just me thinking of OoD as a growling modern take on Wordsworth…
That song is an absolute masterpiece, no question.
7 March 2022
John anderson
@Duke Of Westminster I agree the senitments are universal but so much of the song is place-specific that, to me, it doesn’t carry anywhere near as much significance as it would to someone familiar with the area.
I could write a lovely paean to Guildford namechecking Boney’s, RGS, Pete Martin, Merrow, the Head, Tunsgate Square and the 246, and you could all have a stab at working out what it means but I’m not sure it would strike a chord with everyone.
As I said, it’s stilI a great song and much of this is very subjective.
7 March 2022
paul f
My instinctive initial understanding of OoD was that the point of view transfers to the dead man’s spirit wandering across the Wirral – being his personal “paradise”. But the more I listen to it, the more I think it’s another example of Nigel stitching together two largely unrelated narratives into a single song.
7 March 2022
Janet from accounts
#88 – I see the opening part as yet another thing that his walk allows him to escape from. He’s been faced with questions about someone who has died, maybe on his street or in his town, perhaps during the heights of the pandemic, and that’s a pretty grim thing to confront, but he’s off on his walk and putting those things behind him and enjoying the countryside.
7 March 2022
dr Desperate
I know we haven’t started discussing it properly yet, but if somebody were to ask me “Is ‘Oblong of Dreams’ a ghost story or not?” I’d have to quote China Miéville: “Yes, it is a ghost story or not.”
@John Anderson, I’ve lived pretty much my whole life in places I’m not from, but in spite of that – or more probably because of that – OoD gives me goosebumps.
7 March 2022
Darwin
Love the comments. Until I read them I could make no sense of the last refrain (lack of imagination maybe) But, competing with hundreds, this is in the top 5 of my all time favourites by this beat combo. Been through it with my Dad, so many friends and people are going through it now. Fucking extraordinary song…
8 March 2022
Declan
Is the last verse, a “rage against the dying of the light” sentiment.
The elderly parent lashing out at bingo, is a reaction to far bigger events he can’t control. Just like thirty footy fans in an empty stadium raging at the ref.
10 March 2022
EXXO
Dunno about a PBR thread, we need a helpline (“if you are affected by any of the issues in these songs …”). I do have a tendency to make it a bit about me, do ray me, me, me, but you don’t want to know what I just deleted, that I was about to post in PBRs …
10 March 2022
Chemtrail brian
Could the guy have been a legendary player or manager for Airbus, and now thirty of their fans are singing a tribute at a game, having heard of his demise?
Great song. Love the piano.
10 March 2022
DUKE OF WESTMINSTER
@ John Anderson. I was thinking about your comment again. Most HMHB songs have lots of place-specific details in them but there’s usually an ironic distance involved in the narration that makes them reasonably inclusive for a listener who knows little or nothing about the area in question. It may be that unironic, heartfelt, emotions described in the context of precise topography do not engage all listeners quite so much. I dunno. I suppose “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” contains no specific places but “Upon Westminster Bridge” is quite place-specific (the spirit of both seems to be in this song). Does the fact that the latter takes place in big ole, important London and not ordinary, everyday north Wirral make a difference?
@Paul F – I like the interpretation that when the song takes off as Nigel sings “Food Bank or Pharmacist” the bloke on the ground has just expired (“he’s out of it now”) and then the rest of the song, after “..out of it now”, is narrated by the dead man’s spirit heading off on an extended field-walk. There are a few minor hints at this “the field where she still walks”, “paradise” and “clouds part”. There’s nothing, though, to give greater credence to that slant than, say, it being about an NB-like jogger heading off on a favoured run after having provided brief assistance to some collapsed guy.
I know this is all on the wrong thread and apologies but if CtSO will hold off releasing the page for OoD then such things will happen.
10 March 2022
paul f
Agreed, your grace. It was how I initially interpreted it – but it doesn’t stand up to greater lyrical scrutiny, which is, of course, what this site is all about.
10 March 2022
THE BASTARD IN THE HAT
@I, Problem Chimp #78 — regarding “At last I’ve found you”:
Exxo’s comment #79 would make even more sense with the start of the lyrics to SMOL: “Ah! Sweet mystery of life, at last I’ve found thee”.
I think the “found” is a counterpart to “losing him twice” earlier. The whole song is constantly switching between past, present and future — really remarkably often. One of the losses is occurring now, and the second is in the future. As others have said, the “found” moment could be a flashback to the lanes or an occasional meeting or a future memory. For me, the switching could be a reflection of disoriented minds — as much hers as his — and this helps me to accept the final chant: maybe it’s meant to be disjointed and confusing.
Musically, I agree (#82) STE is a highlight of the album, Neil’s bass is central, and (#26) the drum build-up is great. The strange chords (#46) fit in with the disjointed theme.
10 March 2022
John anderson
@Duke Of Westminster I think you have very eloquently captured how I feel about the song. But I hope you don’t think I’m one of those southerners who thinks civilisation stops north of Watford. I spent three very happy years in Stoke-On-Trent and love the north of England. My wife worked at the Liverpool Playhouse for a while in the 1980s and it’s one of my favourite cities.
In fact while she was there, a lad called David Lloyd applied for a job but didn’t get it. I was annoyed as I would have loved to have met the HMHB keyboard player.
While I’m name dropping, a couple of years ago I spent a fantastic day in Liverpool in the company of Pete Wylie. Top bloke and seemed to know NB pretty well.
10 March 2022
Mark
Could the ‘30 airbus’ be a flight to Switzerland for euthanasia purposes??
10 March 2022
Third rate les
I read up on Bobby Darin. It’s odd the way the song pairs him up with one of his songs rather than his soul mate, but reading his story you can see why. Ouch.
Always struggled with most versions of “Mack The Knife” apart from the grainy recording of Bertolt Brecht singing it himself. They are either overly operatic (am a big opera fan but I loathe operatic singing where it doesn’t belong – see also Porgy and Bess) or they’re the English-language jokey swing version, like Darin’s. It’s a song for smokey cellars and dark mitteleuropa backstreets, not Vegas cabarets.
13 March 2022
parsfan
At the Brighton gig in 2013: Nigel’s opening comment “…And you get a free Parker Pen with every quote” was from one of those Michael Parkinson insurance/pension adverts.
Ta Roger
13 March 2022
EXXO
@Les. What I love about that line in the context of the whole five lines is that it gives us a real insight into the probable writing process, the way the lines came together, with the first “ife” rhyme looking like the last box to be filled – I can imagine it was probably unfilled for a long time – and yes, something leftfield being the outcome, Bobby Darin, a philanderer, deliberately chosen because he didn’t have what is being sung about here.
@Paul (Parsfan) and @Roger. 🙂
13 March 2022
Paul f
Darin was of course one of the “Bobbies” (Vinton, Vee etc) that Jerry Lee Lewis considered the embodiment of all that was wrong with Rock’n’Roll by the early 60s, and why he was so happy to see The Beatles sweep them all away.
14 March 2022
Free parker pen
Is it “ conduct reports “ plural ? Since there are two comments that follow. Sadly I can remember them being “ mixed “ as well.
15 March 2022
dr Desperate
I had “conduct reports” (because it is).
15 March 2022
That chiseller, idris
And I had ‘conduct report’s’, as in ‘[the] conduct report is’.
15 March 2022
CARRIE ANNE
Lads, we’ve been had! Astounded to discover, as I reach the age of eligibility, that it is not a free Parker pen at all, and hasn’t been for years. It’s a free Schaeffer pen. That and the other 4 “stupendous stats about the SunLife free pen” – https://www.sunlife.co.uk/articles-guides/your-money/sunlife-free-pen/
The sour cream and chive debacle all over again.
15 March 2022
paul f
I think the switch to Sheaffer (which I’ve just discovered is the correct spelling) is quite a recent development.
15 March 2022
dr Desperate
Now that’s disappointing (especially as Shaeffer would have fitted the metre equally well).
15 March 2022
CARRIE ANNE
The article I linked too is nearly 7 years old
15 March 2022
paul f
Interesting – perhaps you don’t get a pen at all these days?
15 March 2022
EXXO
Well it looks like i was right then about the “Mack the Knife” rhyme taking a long time to come up with 🙂
15 March 2022
I, problem chimp
@Dr D #112 You’d lose the alliteration, though…
15 March 2022
woodnoggin
I hear only a singular conduct report, with a prominently aspirated T at the end, as often occurs with a Scouse accent.
15 March 2022
Chemtrail brian
Can I raise the possibility of “the ‘is he?’ years” instead of “the easy years”? I.e. the years where there was still some ambiguity, doubt and hope.
It sounds (to my non-merseyside ears) more like that than “easy”, and I don’t think the preceding years, with the onset of his dementia, would be easy.
16 March 2022
JIM IN THE ANTIPODES
Excellent chat regarding these excellent (albeit) challenging lyrics. While I accept the version “At last I’ve found you!”, I have to say that I hear “I’m lost, I’ve found you!”. This doesn’t fit with any of the well-noted cross-references, but it does fit with the contradictory and frustrating nature of dementia….. just a thought
17 March 2022
duke of westminster
Is NB also alluding to Rock and Roll Heaven recorded by the Righteous Brothers in 1974 with the Bobby Darin reference – “and Bobby gave us Mack the Knife”? Songs about loss?
17 March 2022
Dull Head Del
IThe line is definitely ‘At last I found you’ but when I first heard it I thought it was ‘I must have phoned you’. Like he had picked up the phone but by the time it was answered he had forgotten he had made a call.
17 March 2022
Xpyda
I have listened and listened and I still have no idea what this song is about. If it’s about football then that would explain it because I know nor care to know anything about football. It sounds like it should be dignitas but now I type this I’m thinking football shirts and transfer season and the deliberate lack of humour being something beyond my ken kickyball wise?
I haven’t the time to read all the preceding comments, which I trust would contain these answers, so could someone recap and tag me please?
For what it’s worth the *only* thing I have ever liked about football is the biscuits’ songs about it.
That shows what great songwriters they are.
I’m 61 now and my 7 year old is going to football practice.
Share my pain.
17 March 2022
Xpyda
Again, sorry if I’m late to the chase but I remember an old pun, probably on a radio show , *possibly* Barrie Cryer “oh sweet Miss Terry of Life (magazine) at last…..you know the rest.
A convoluted pun about a search for a mystery journalist. They also did “onwards crisp bin solderers” and something like “super fragile expelled motives(?) causes Halitosis.
Please tell me this isn’t all cognitive dissonance.
17 March 2022
Pirx the purist
It would have been Frank Muir or Denis Norden at the end of an edition of “My Word!” on Radio 4. They would end each week’s show by each spinning a yarn ostensibly to explain a well-known phrase or quote. The result was always a well-turned pun on the actual phrase given.
A number of the stories were collected into anthologies which sold very well in about late-70s – mid-80s.
18 March 2022
dr Desperate
I had those books (alas, no longer), including one titled ‘You Can’t Have Your Kayak and Heat It’. A CD was released in 2005, the track listing of which suggests little crossover with Biscuitworld, apart perhaps from ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’, which was rendered “Soup, a cauli, fridge, elastic, eggs, peas, halitosis”.
For anyone interested, that story pun model is known as a ‘feghoot’, named after an unhelpful Scrabble hand by its originator, the American SF writer Reginald Bretnor. His character Ferdinand Feghoot worked for the Society for the Aesthetic Re-Arrangement of History, travelling in time using a device represented as the “)(“, which one assumes may have from time to time gone on the blink (and we’re back in the room).
18 March 2022
clown in a yaris
Have tried to persevere with this track, alas to no avail. How anyone can like it is beyond me. I’m as mad about the Biscuits as anyone, but this is a dreadful dirge.
Sorry boys.
20 March 2022
CARDIACS AND A BEER
My (perhaps somewhat fanciful) read of the song is that it culminates in him coming back to her, ever briefly –
26 March 2022
cardiacs and a beer
– “occasional sunshine / where clarity reigns… at last I’ve found you!” – except the “joke” is that where this happens is at the football she’s taken him to, where this sublime moment is interrupted by the thirty shouting supporters.
26 March 2022
Bulbatross
The guy going into “the care home ” is an ex footy fan (possible hooligan). Much of the song details where he is now -in relation to what his wife is doing for him. He is transported back in his mind to a time when he was actively partaking in the footy scene. Some other random facts about Jeanette Mcdonald and Co. flash through his head before he starts gollering for Airbus. I believe “Slipping the escort” refers to when away fans would sneak away from the horse back coppers leading them to the ground
1 April 2022
BarahirNZ
Does ‘Thirty Airbus’ refer to the two of them on an A330 flight to Switzerland – with only one return ticket? Giving it large in the best seats up the front of the bus? Money no object now, as they don’t sew pockets into shrouds.
1 April 2022
TRANSIT FULL OF keith
For me it’s a bit different, it’s more about the increasing gulf between them – the Nelson Eddy bit is her trying to get through to him by talking about old songs, and the Thirty Airbus bit is the very different place he’s gone to in his mind. ‘Slipping the escort’ refers to both the fans getting into the home end, but also to him going AWOL (both literally and mentally) from her.
Its also possible that in his confused walkabout he actually joins a bunch of fans, crashes the home end, and that’s where she finds him; or she finds him sitting in the empty football ground reliving that in his mind.
2 April 2022
EXXO
It’s interesting Keith that you take the the third person narrative of the song to be an omniscient one, and you have her the couple conversing about those songs. That’s quite possible I suppose, but to me it’s very much a third person song where it’s the narrator who introduces the McDonald/Eddy metaphor for their relationship and it’s the narrator who, in observing her love for the old man, has learned the credo from ‘Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life’ about love being everything. That’s what’s so marvellous about the strange Mack the Knife line – that it gives away the fact that the whole song is written to build up to what the mystery of life that the narrator has found is.
And it’s quite possibly the narrator who is then embarrassed to actually state the credo of love and instead debunks it with the ‘Midge Ure looks like a milk thief’ type chant at the end.
2 April 2022
dr Desperate
Yes, the ‘Mack the Knife’ line is marvellous, as gloriously unexpected as “there’s often more intrigue in the pool games”. Still, I can’t help hoping that one day Nigel might change it in a live environment to (the arguably more relevant) “And Freddie Frinton had ‘Meet the Wife'”.
11 April 2022
HGANAVAC
This is particularly poignant for me as my dad died from Alzheimer’s in a care home. The toughest lines are “no preparation for losing him twice”, and “occasional sunshine”. I still remember the moments of that sunshine when for certain lucid moments there was a brief return. I also remember knowing the end was close when he said he couldn’t be bothered to listen to his iPod, he was responsible for all of my introductions to music and once his love for it left him, he was ready to leave the Oblong of Dreams.
12 April 2022
Don Fabio
I love this forum, but…… Is not Nigel’s genius the ability to finish a tune with an element of the absurd. There’s a Persian Rug Sale – how does it possibly relate to the initial lyrics? Julio sings? You can’t put your foot up? Suspected murderer in Tupac….? Embrace the absurd – it’s why we love them
15 April 2022
EXXO
Yes, totally. Trying to make a coherent story out of the whole song is arguably the absurdest thing.
Nigel sees sign at the URC for an absurd (but real) concept. It sparks a mash-up of absurd images. A dream? A series of dreams? Yet another statement about the difficulty of writing a coherent song? Whatever, it’s beautiful.
15 April 2022
Don Fabio
That’s how I see it. That’s why they are genius.
15 April 2022
Coops
Might have been said earlier, not read all the comments, but is the “if she can hold that needle steady” line about euthenasia? If so it makes this song extraordinary.
26 April 2022
EXXO
It’s isn’t really about euthanasia no, but it’s a wonderful line that I think always retains that ghost of the first time you heard it, when yes, for a fraction of a second you wondered what she was doing with the needle. The unsteady voice for the unsteady hand … just breathtaking stuff.
27 April 2022
TRANSIT FULL OF keith
Absolutely that – she’s sewing the name on because he goes walkabout, but the hint of darker thoughts crowding in seems quite deliberate.
27 April 2022
Mark V
Great discussion certainly at first. I’m in this now. My wife has just gone into care and ‘losing him twice’ is powerful stuff when you face it for real. I’ve just bought a load of iron on name tags because clothes get mixed up in the laundry. ‘At last I’ve found you’ is a lyric from the song ‘Ah sweet mystery of life’ during which he used to hold her steady. Not sure about ‘the lanes’ but is sounds like a shared happy place. ’30 Airbus’ chant feels like him in his own head lost in memories.
27 April 2022
Murderous gIraffe
“Sweet mystery of life, at last I’ve found you”. I see this as her epiphany. All those years together and it’s only when she’s about to lose him that it all comes into focus. It’s like a total perspective vortex.
27 April 2022
EXXO
It might be a perspective vortex, but if it’s her epiphany it’s certainly a massive jump in perspective. Can you think of another instance in HMHB lyrics where a 3rd person narration suddenly jumps to an “I?” OK, it’s quoting song lyrics, so that might allow it not to be such a jump – she might be quoting or singing. But my money’s on it being the narrator’s epiphany.
28 April 2022
Mark V
The Lanes is the name of a bowling alley near Bristol that used to become a dance hall in the evening. There is a place in Wrexham called Tenpin but I don’t know anything about it’s history.
29 April 2022
Pirx The Purist
It’s in the Eagles Meadow shopping centre (aka the Debenhams Memorial Wind Tunnel), one of a long line of ‘retail experiences’ which has torn the heart out of the town in the last thirty-odd years.
(For further bloviating on the same point, see this piece and its follow-up piece for what the Curse Of Bigness has done to even substantial villages)
29 April 2022
Parsfan
Maybe they used to go ten pin bowling after work.
29 April 2022
Steve Maddern
In psychiatric institutions/care homes/nursing homes, an escort is assigned to a patient/resident who is at risk of absconding or coming to harm. ‘Slipping the escort’ to means escaping from the assigned staff member.
‘Back in the lanes’ – the picture I get is of the two of them remembering playing in the lanes around their homes as children.
As for ’30 Airbus’… evidently football related, but how it relates to the story is a subject for wonderful conjecture.
On the surface it’s a straightforward story about a wife coping with her husband’s dementia and putting him in a home. But there is a back story in that he was a hooligan, of sorts, in his younger days and still quite likes to keep up with what’s going on in the world of hooliganism – but there isn’t any suggestion of this until you get to the last line (which I had knocking around for ages).
I had the title first, which is a double meaning thing. Slipping the escort was always about when fans came out of a station and if you were really looking to have a fight with opposing fans you’d be looking to get away from the main set of supporters and the police escort so you can have a scrap up a back street with 30 of their lot, or whatever. But the term can also mean you’re losing it, both mentally and physically.
The line “Ah! Sweet mystery of life, at last I’ve found you!” is actually sung by the patient – the bloke. It’s not the wife or narrator. His sweet mystery of life is having a big scrap at the football. That is what he loved. In the song “Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life” by Nelson Eddy, it’s love he’s referring to.
Take away the last bit of the song, the rest of it is brought about simply because – and this is ridiculous but it’s true – there’s an episode of Dad’s Army where they get trapped on the pier, and they’ve got nothing to eat because Pike’s forgotten to bring the food. There’s a chocolate machine there, and they have one of those claw crane things – but the chocolate is made of cardboard. They’re all really angry and all that and Warden Hodges ends up with them and he gets pissed because Frazer has some whisky and Warden Hodges steals it. And he starts singing – and for years I wondered “What’s he singing there?” I loved it and it made me laugh. And he’s singing “Ah! Sweet Mystery Of Life” by Nelson Eddy. I investigated that song and bought it on CD by Nelson Eddy. He did it as a duet with Jeanette MacDonald, so I took the basis of that and thought “Right, I’m going to write a song around it”.
Initially, I was writing it with the intention of getting a girl to sing the song, and I literally changed it about a week before I went into the studio. The whole song should be, and initially was, “I, I, I”…”If I could hold that needle steady” and so on. But I ended up changing it because I didn’t have the bottle to ask, for instance, Eliza Carthy, who I don’t know, or someone else who I DO know – Niamh Rowe from The Sundowners, a band in West Kirby. Niamh doesn’t have any idea I was going to ask her (but she couldn’t have done it anyway because she was having a baby at the time).
So it should be a female singing it – and the first line, with a female vocal, would have been “The days we feared are here”. I had to change it at the last minute because I knew I wasn’t going to get anyone to sing it, and that I would be singing it. I became the narrator. It therefore became “he” and “she”. But I’ve made a mistake in the song and no one has pulled me up on it – no one’s noticed. And I’ll come back to that later…
At the very end – “Ah! Sweet mystery of life” – that’s him, because he’s found out about the “30 Airbus”. Whether this bit actually happened is open to the listener’s interpretation, but it’s the sort of thing he would have looked for over the weekend, on a Sunday – certainly when he was compos mentis. He would have been excited about it and told his mates – “Did you hear about that at the weekend? 30 Airbus were in the Town End seats” kind of thing. What’s happening at the end of the song is – he’s finally gone and whether or not the incident has happened, it’s certainly happened in his head. He’s getting excited, the nurses are trying to hold him down and his wife is shuffling off up the corridor in tears because she’s thinking “That’s it now, I’ve lost him totally”.
But any love was just a normal man and wife relationship.
“Occasional sunshine/Where clarity reigns/And memories are mutual/And we’re back in the lanes…”
This should have ended “THEY’RE back in the lanes” – because I had been talking about “he” and “she” – but I didn’t change it. When I changed everything else, I somehow overlooked that and didn’t make it “they’re back in the lanes”, which it should be to fit the rest of what the lyrics became because I didn’t get a girl to sing it. Although I can get away with it in the way that if I’m the storyteller I can say “And we’re back in the lanes” (with them).
The lanes, themselves?
In my mind’s eye, there is a specific lane but as it’s not about me it doesn’t really matter. For the record, though, the lane is called Marsh Lane and runs between Lever Causeway and Storeton Woods. I visualise the area where it bends just below the woods.
The location of the Town End seats?
No ground in particular. I wasn’t thinking of a specific ground.
I’m reminded of the sweet piano/keyboards sound in Skin Deep by The Stranglers at times during this song.
Yes, there is piano at the start, before the lyrics come in, and keyboards at the end of the song. Both are played by Ben, who did the brass on Big Man Up Front. The piano used is the same one which Chris Martin played “Yellow” on!
4 May 2022
Andrew Harrison
Are we 100% sure it’s not “DIRTY Airbus” cos that’s what it sounds like to me? The taunting chant of the home fans after Airbus have shown up with a game plan of shithousery but a poor away complement? Must admit I will have to listen more closely.
7 May 2022
EXXO
We listen in accents as well as speak in them, so for what it’s worth from those of us who are local, there’s no doubt. Not that there’s been any doubt previously from anyone who is not familiar with the accent either.
Anyway, the interview seems to have been based on both parties reading through these threads and then discussing them, so NB would have pointed out such a major discrepancy had it been there (though not necessarily all discrepancies).
NB said basically that the old fella is outraged at the idea of the successful invasion of the home end at his club, whether real or imaginary.
7 May 2022
garstanger toestub
I might be possible that this is the most tear-worthy song since that bad haired astronomer and his dentist, engineer and artist mates gave us “These are the days of our lives”
To quote the venerable late, lamented Robert of Ball, “I’m fillin’ up!”
26 May 2022
Rhombus of nightMares
Late to the party, I know. Firstly, this is the most extraordinary song – their best ever moment in the studio…until the following song.
Just one thought about 30 Airbus. The “Town“ End for me refers to the club name, not the end of the ground. Back in the day, I’d say “Arsenal fans got in the United end”, not “Arsenal fans got in the Stretford End” (yes, I’m aware Arsenal fans weren’t exactly known for their hoolies, but bear with me).
It’s the thing of beauty, either way.
8 June 2022
EXXO
I nodded along at first there, but then I thought it has always been rare that away fans have the whole of an end, especially back in the day, and “the [name of club] end” at home ground only makes sense in certain limited contexts.
8 June 2022
Telford Biccy
Who’d thought the line “30 Airbus giving it the big ‘un in the town end seats” could send shivers down the spine?
Outstanding album.
19 June 2022
worc0257
Fortuitously, finished sewing nametapes (well, ironing them in, to be completely honest) in my son’s school shirts while playing this. Dementia = “hideous inverted childhood” (LARKIN) That’s what I thought, anyway.
But then I’m from Coventry, and know what a batch is.
Not sure there’s a better HMHB song, after twenty or so listens.
When I hear there’s a new HMHB album, I always look forward to track two: very reliable.
16 September 2022
Brumbiscuit
@WORC0257: I started a job in Cov in 2015. One Saturday shift, when all was quiet, a workmate came in and said he was doing a batch run. I honestly thought he was going to the on-site printers, so declined his kind offer, not knowing he was off to fetch bacon rolls
16 September 2022
BOBBY SVARC
Cob County starts about Wolvey.
16 September 2022
john
We listen in accents as well as speak in them, so for what it’s worth from those of us who are local, there’s no doubt. Not that there’s been any doubt previously from anyone who is not familiar with the accent either.
Anyway, the interview seems to have been based on both parties reading through these threads and then discussing them, so NB would have pointed out such a major discrepancy had it been there (though not necessarily all discrepancies).
NB said basically that the old fella is outraged at the idea of the successful invasion of the home end at his club, whether real or imaginary.
Chris The Siteowner
Did this as the first song from the album because it was generating the most correspondence – or at least the refrain at the end was. Pretty convinced it’s “Thirty Airbus…” (i.e. supporters) so what are your thoughts on what that bit means in the context of the song? I have mine.
As for the location of the “Town End seats”, I asked Dave from welsh-football.net, and he suggested that there’s an obvious, seated Town End at Aberystwyth, so it could it be Park Avenue?
As ever, all comments on the transcribed lyrics, all thoughts on the content, and all general reviews of the song, are very welcome. Over to you…
26 February 2022
Paul f
Airbus would presumably refer to the works football team from Broughton.
26 February 2022
EXXO
Indeed. During a pre-season friendly at the Racecourse Ground, Pirx?
26 February 2022
That chiseller idris
Definitely 30 Airbus to these ears. Beautiful song. Probably the only HMHB song I can think of with no humour and all the more striking because of it. As I suspect will be the case with many if us, I’ve seen family members go through this so it really resonates.
Also, it almost feels like we’re revisting Vince and Constance a few years on, which to me makes it a sequel not only to Bain of Constance but also part of a trilogy with Them’s The Vagaries.
26 February 2022
poopleby
To me it feels like Harsh Times four years on and therefore four years worse.
26 February 2022
Duke of westmInster
Seems more like a companion piece to Terminus to me.
Could it be…”And we’re back in The Lanes”. Either shopping area (loads of them all over the country) or just a place known as The Lanes. The memory seems to a shaft of light specific recollection about a place and “the lanes” seems to be too vague for this purpose.
26 February 2022
Woodnoggin
I thought it was either “Thirty Airbus” or “Thirty year bus”. Neither made sense to me. My partner suggested “Third-tier bus”, as ridden by supporters of a third tier football team, but that would make for an odd stress on the word “tier”.
26 February 2022
dr Desperate
No doubt it’s Airbus UK Broughton FC, originally the works team of the factory where the wings of the Airbus airliner are made.
Far be it from me to disagree with the editor of Welsh Football Magazine over a Welsh football matter, but I’d be inclined to think that the ‘town end’ might be at Y Morfa, Conwy Utd (now Conwy Borough)’s ground.
Airbus UK played their first two matches after promotion to the Cymru Premier in 2004 there, as their own ground couldn’t be brought up to league standards in time. The ‘We All Stand Together’ non-league football website describes a mural painted on the stand behind Conwy’s “town end goal” – one imagines a small contingent of Wingmakers fans making a nuisance of themselves there.
26 February 2022
CARRIE ANNE
Roger tells me that ‘Ah, Sweet Mystery Of Life’ was a MacDonald/Eddy duet.
26 February 2022
dr Desperate
In a similar style to Frank Lampard “giving it the big ‘un” to Jurgen Klopp between their respective technical areas on this memorable occasion.
https://talksport.com/football/736804/chelsea-frank-lampard-liverpool-jurgen-klopp-row/
26 February 2022
duke of westminster
Aber beat Airbus 5-3 on Valentines Day 2020 (there’s an S4C highlights of the game on that Youtube). Not clear where the Town End seats are (as there is no “Town End” description for any part of the ground on the club’s website) but maybe it is by the bus depot end. In any event, there look to be not much more than about 30 people in total in the stadium once staff are excluded and the nearest I could see to anyone giving it the big un is a young lad clapping after Airbus get a second goal. I’d be surprised if Airbus take 30 to away games as far away as Aber (though that may be part of the point I suppose).
Perhaps we should be looking at other stadia for Town End seats. Prenton Park is a candidate but can’t find details of an Airbus game.
26 February 2022
Pirx The Purist
“Indeed. During a pre-season friendly at the Racecourse Ground, Pirx?”
No, that end – although the nearer to the town centre – has never been known as that. It was always known as ‘The Crispin Lane End’ or (with staggering originality) ‘The Kop’.
It included one of the oddest football-ground structures of all time, namely the balcony of the former Majestic Cinema re-purposed as a small stand, extending for about a quarter of the width of the end. The stand was known colloquially as ‘The Busfield’ (pronounced ‘Bush-field’) after the local trader whose advertisement featured across the front of it for years. It was in use from about 1961 to its being condemned as a fire hazard in about 1976. It stayed in place until that end of the ground was revamped in about 1978. It was useful for sheltering under when watching a dull game against Bury on a November evening.
I can’t help with the meaning in the lyrics because I’m still waiting for my copy to turn up.
26 February 2022
dr Desperate
Post 10 refers to post 8 of course, not 9 (though to cause further cross-post confusion, I’ll just mention that ‘Ah, Sweet Mystery Of Life’ was quoted by Madeline Kahn in ‘Young Frankenstein’ in certain circumstances).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E81ICJywqwg
26 February 2022
dr Desperate
I understand Airbus have an unusual feature at the own ground, The Airfield: three retracting floodlights, as the pitch is adjacent to an operational runway.
26 February 2022
Exxo
Yes those to whom ’30 Airbus’ makes no sense, that is how we refer to numbers of football supporters. “There was four thousand Boreham Wood at Everton even though their home crowd is four hundred” sort of thing.
Thanks Pirx. Wish I’d researched properly now. And no its not Tranmere as there’s been no Airbus game there and the Town End Paddock is not the away end. Nigel watches the Welsh league on welsh telly so yes the Duke and Doc have likely options there. If there is a link with the title, which there probably is (in fact the title is what makes it a not complete non-sequitur), then of course the Town End may well be the home end that the idiots think they have somehow “taken” by slipping the escort.
26 February 2022
Paul f
It seems Wrexham’s Kop End is sometimes referred to as the Town End.
https://www.leaderlive.co.uk/sport/18283957.important-redeveloping-wrexham-fcs-famous-kop-end-putting-things-right-pitch/
26 February 2022
featureless steve
I had a mate who quit supporting Chester (City, as was) many years ago to start following Airbus.
He never mentioned giving it the big ‘un with the Broughton Ultras.
26 February 2022
parsfan
On train on way home after another of the results of a lifetime. Where I was will have no relevance to the song but we have/had a ”town end” and “Cowden end”, neither of which will be seen mentioned on any club website. Like most clubs it’s all former player and direction based nomenclature these days.
26 February 2022
dr Desperate
Appropriately self-aggrandising title of Paul (‘The man who put Oasis together’) Ashbee’s autobiography.
https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Giving_it_the_Bigun.html?id=shTwxQEACAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y
26 February 2022
Audrey’s euphemisms
Must admit I’d totally forgotten that Airbus existed as a football team (coverage of Welsh football being fairly non-existent here in Ireland), and so had half-convinced myself that the lyric related to Aarhus until a mate of mine in Bristol reminded me about them. On re-listening, it’s definitely Airbus. I have no idea which ground the Town End seats are in, but the Conwy theory sounds more plausible than most to me, given the relative proximity to the Wirral.
26 February 2022
Exxo
@Duke – for me “back in the lanes” works perfectly in that verse as a metaphor for the moments of lucidity and awareness, with a double resonance for those non-drivers who are occasionally passengers in octagenarian parents’ cars.
26 February 2022
Mr.X
I was watching Airbus U.K. Broughton F.C’s 3-0 win over Llanidloes Town yesterday at The Airfield. Attendance 144, which is well below average but understandable considering the Six Nations being on and the timing of the match along with the opposition.
The manager Steve O’Shaughnessy, who made 202 Football League appearances between 1984 and 1994, has been one of my best mates since he became player-manager at Flexsys Cefn Druids in the summer of 2001. I followed Druids home and away along with training with the team when I was a teenager. In fact, Shaughssa was my lift to and from the game yesterday.
Airbus are currently top of the Cymru North by three points with a game in a hand over Llandudno. They were controversially relegated on points per game during as the Pandemic hit.
Only the Welsh Premier had a season in 2020-21 so there was no opportunity to win promotion back until now.
27 February 2022
Paul f
@Mr X – how often does your mate get asked about his century in 35 minutes?
27 February 2022
Voltaroland gift
After about 3 listens I get the image of a woman admitting that she’s now reached an age where the needs of her dependant have grown too much for her to manage alone & now he needs adult social care. Whether it’s Son or Husband I don’t know.
Was he a bit of a football ‘lad’ who took a knock to the head on an away day?
27 February 2022
Chris The Siteowner
I see it something like that. The song up until the final part is about her, then the ending is what’s going on in his head.
27 February 2022
Woodnoggin
I love how the drums kick in at “and we’re back in The Lanes”, as memories of better days come flooding back. Great composition.
27 February 2022
The moth
May not be this, but the country roads between Meols and Frankby/Greasby are known as ‘the lanes’ by my Hoylake rellos. They went walking and cycling there back in the day. Not so now – choked with traffic.
27 February 2022
CARRIE ANNE
A woman is having to put her husband into a home because his dementia is becoming too much to cope with. In his earlier days, he was involved in Welsh Non-League football hooliganism and he has become agitated/excited because he’s heard of some trouble at the weekend involving fans of Airbus UK and A.N. Other unspecified team. This ‘incident’ has only manifested in his own mind of course. He has finally found the madness of the disease. Airbus UK fans would be highly unlikely to cause any trouble, and possibly never taken 30 fans anywhere. Both heart breaking and humorous for those caring for him, which I guess matches our own experience of this awful illness.
27 February 2022
dr Desperate
That all makes sense, @CA. The title, with typical ingenuity, shifts its meaning to fit all of those scenarios, each implying escape (either voluntary or otherwise) from some form of control.
First the hooligan evading the police escort on the way from the station to the ground; then the husband losing control of his intellect; then the wife losing the husband that kept her steady and the husband his caring wife; and finally the care home resident lashing out at his perceived tormentors.
Many of us will have witnessed at least some parts of this sequence at first hand; some may even feel the dread of it happening to ourselves.
27 February 2022
EXXO
Pretty much all the way I hear it, Chris, Karen & John, and all the more so because I have personaly heard ‘slipping the escort’ used as a football fan’s witty way of saying they had got away from the attention of their spouse (for a short period).
Regarding the final chant, I would add that it’s not necessarily something he’s personally experienced or imagined, but could be a version of something he’s seen on telly. And that we could be looking at a “Bugger Bognor” type scenario.
27 February 2022
EXXO
Hmm. Sometimes you look at what someone else would find if they google something that you’ve just written. Apparently the stories we were told that they were George V’s famous last words are no longer in circulation, no longer at all famous. Fake news.
27 February 2022
Brian Damage
While we are discussing various lower- and non-league ends, please could someone address why Awkward Sean goes in the Home End? My experience of Prenton Park is limited to celebrating promotion there with Bury so I will be happy to be enlightened.
We played pool, he would arrange beer mats into a tower.
That’s him there
Stood at the back
Next to Anthony Power (?)
Awkward Sean
Awkward Sean
Semtex Sean
Home End Sean
27 February 2022
EXXO
He’s so eccentric that he goes on aways and goes in the home end, on his own. Probably with no ill intent.
Three Biscuiteers got 20 points each in the last round of Fantasy Biscuitball League because we anticipated correctly that “that’s him there…” was intended for gesture at gigs.
27 February 2022
EXXO
40 points, even.
27 February 2022
TRANSIT FULL OF keith
Anthony Power? The murdered lingerie tycoon? (Google it. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.)
27 February 2022
dr Desperate
More likely the British Olympic fencer, I’d imagine.
27 February 2022
Duke of westminster
There’s an interesting dialogue between the melody of the high point to which the song builds (“Ah sweet mystery of life”) and that in Say Hello and Wave Goodbye (“take your hands off me”). The melodic progression in both is almost (a couple of extra notes in STE) identical.
In STE, the finding and losing seems like it is at the end of a near lifelong relationship in which he held her steady and she is losing him for the second time (after the senility loss) as he goes to a home with, perhaps, a third loss when he dies in the future. In SHAWG, the finding and losing in the relationship is at the opposite end of the spectrum – two people who never knew each other and bringing it to an end as an act of empowerment.
Could almost be a songwriting exercise – what about giving the same emotional interest to an elderly couple in a song as pop songs usually give to young people.
27 February 2022
Superbreeze bex
Have to say in my years watching Aberystwyth Town, I never heard mention of the Town End (which might indeed be the bus end)
27 February 2022
bobbybottler
Home End Sean is 100% referring to a lone wolf going into the wrong end on away days.
One of the other things I agree 100% with is Carrie Anne’s interpretation of 30 Airbus etc
But all I really came here to say was that Elm Park had a Town End, and I happily watched a load (more than 30) of Tranmere fans grumpily watch a 0-0 draw in the 94/95 play-off semi final
28 February 2022
Poopleby
Exxo, @31, depending upon who was teaching history at the time George V’s last words, as told to me, were either “Bugger Bognor” or “How is the empire?” I suspect neither is correct and Wikipedia say his final words were “God damn you”, before he was euthanased. Which brings me to my point. Is STE darker than we have been considering? Losing him twice and the reference to the needle then a conduct report. Is she letting him go for good?
28 February 2022
cream cheese and chives
A brilliant portrait of a woman reaching the point when she realises that she alone cannot provide the care needed for her other half. Care at home is moving to care somewhere else. Her concern about the name in his shirt reflects worries about institutional laundries and the mixed reports at progress meetings confirm that he is no longer to be at home.
The ‘thirty Airbus’ comes directly after she finally tracks him down in his new abode. Her joy and relief at finding him in his new place is cut short when he shares his news about the presence of thirty Airbus. Where this comes from he/she does not know but he will be keen to share the news with his wife. Her silence demonstrates just how wide the gap between them has now become; the gap that never used to exist.
28 February 2022
John
After a recent visit to Prenton Park to watch Swindon get rather badly beaten, I was reminded by some very affable Tranmere supporters that there is still a residual bitterness about an abandoned game at the County Ground in 1992 when we were 0-2 down. To further anger, we won the rearranged game.
One of our ends is The Town End. I’m wondering if there’s a connection but I’m buggered if I can see it.
28 February 2022
A bore in superdry
John – I went to that one, December 1992, a lovely sunny afternoon. I think Hoddle was playing and it was passing him by.
Floodlights packed up in the second half. Away fans were offered complementary tickets for the rearranged game. Good times.
28 February 2022
Burly Physio
@John #42. I was at the game. A very long way to go without a single shot on target, made it home to The Valleys at 4am.
Second cheapest Bovril in League 2 though. I was at the floodlight failure game in 92 too. We were getting slaughtered so a very fortuitous time for a fuse to blow. I’ve actually just come on here to ask how one goes about nominating a song for a Novello Award. These lyrics are the most moving account of living as a carer of a dementia sufferer.
28 February 2022
Willshed
Llanelli AFC have a Town End at Stebonheath to this day, and we’ve played Airbus on a few occasions in our glory days in the WPL – but alas the said area is behind the goals and home to a dilapidated all-weather training area.
Can’t recall Airbus bring much of a crowd either – John Hulse’s Rhyl were by far the noisy North Walian neighbours back then, even attending midweeks in numbers with their skull and crossbones flag and all that.
28 February 2022
Banana custard
Thanks as ever for being a genius Chris.
I’m with the Duke (and potentially his good lady wife) … suspect it’s “The Lanes”. I’d visualised this as the Brighton Lanes … but could be anywhere.
I think this is an astonishing song … musical and lyrically. I’m getting it as being about an old lady with declining husband with only patches of sunlight.
Will need to listen a bit more to get it all – but wanted to comment on the quality of the tune here. They’ve always been good musically – but there’s new depths and chord tricks here I think. Reminded me a bit of the poignancy of Dirty Old Town. Brilliant stuff.
1 March 2022
Pirx The Purist
@Audrey’s euphemisms (comment #20). There’s not much more coverage of it here either. The BBC’s sports programmes/web pages all but ignore it; the two self-styled ‘National Newspapers of Wales’ (i.e., the Western Mail, which has no circulation worth speaking of north of Aberystwyth; and the Daily Post, which has no circulation worth speaking of south of Aberystwyth) consider it almost beneath their notice; and S4C’s Sgorio, which used to be on at peak time on a Monday evening when it was showing highlights from Serie A and La Liga, has been shunted off to nearly midnight now it covers only our own league.
1 March 2022
Gordo
just like with ‘TNS in the blob mob-handed’ (This One’s For Now) ’30 Airbus giving it the big-un in the town end seats’ is definitely from Nigel’s imagination of a world where Cymru Premier League teams have ultras. When I saw Airbus play TNS a few years back it was the only game I’ve ever been to where the half-time whistle was greeted by complete silence from the entire ‘crowd’
1 March 2022
woodnoggin
This song has been bouncing round my head for days. Despite its sadness, it’s the one I’ve listened to most from the album so far, and not just because I was trying to figure out what he’s singing at the end. The poignant lyrics, the gradual build-up to the Town End seats singalong, some lovely alliteration (apart, adrift, alone, afraid, ahead) – brilliant stuff.
1 March 2022
Guts
And now he’s washed and dressed and ready
To keep him safe she’ll face the hurt
And if she could hold that needle steady
She could sew his name into his shirt”
I don’t really have much to add, but this simple lyric painted such a vivid picture of an old lady breaking down while trying to sort her husbands stuff out that it was like a punch in the bollocks and I think it’s amazing.
1 March 2022
Pirx The Purist
“Just for enquiring
She’ll get a free Parker pen”
Anyone explain this reference to me (assuming it has any significance at all)?
An astonishing song. Although there’s long been an elegiac element to NB’s lyrics (think the chorus of ‘Jelutong’, for example), maintaining it for a whole song and at such depth (OoD similarly) is a mark of his complete maturity as a songwriter.
2 March 2022
Lamper
@pirx I think it refers to the free gifts given as inducements to respond to adverts for life insurance, annuities and the like in weekly magazines.
2 March 2022
EXXO
Afternoon TV. Michael Parkinson getting old folks to cough up a fee every month to end up with a fixed sum to cover their funeral expenses. You get a free pen just for enquiring.
Dunno why they didn’t carry on using June Whitfield when she died, just to emphasise the point. I mean her family could have done with the cash to cover the funeral expenses.
2 March 2022
paul f
And it always is a Parker pen for some reason. Perhaps people in that demographic need the reassurance of a brand name they recognise from their youth.
2 March 2022
Janet from accounts
Free Parker pen (just for enquiring) at 44s into this old advert.
https://youtu.be/jzMm00NaDvw
2 March 2022
EXXO
cf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN-m8vx1atI
2 March 2022
DULL head del
To me the ’30 Airbus…’ lines is a happy memory. Maybe he was involved or just witnessed 30 of his teams fans giving it big ‘un in the town end seats…Ties in with emotion content of the song that way. Then the title would then relate to this moment, his memory going missing and his wife losing him too. Very good song indeed. Also agree that the choice of Airbus is because you’re probably not going to get much hooliganism from them so is a funny image.
2 March 2022
Pirx The Purist
Thanks, all. I thought that was what it was (I’ve been getting guff like that through the post since I was about 47).
2 March 2022
Hoylake Gebrselassie
This is a wonderful song, but I couldn’t quite make the chant at the end fit with the rest until I found myself thinking about it this way:
There are studies that show how music and singing can awaken the memory of patients with dementia. So could it be that this couple used to attend matches together? And that “the lanes” are the backroads and side streets that they took to “slip the escort”. And that the chant is one they sang together then, and sing together now – a mutual memory?
3 March 2022
third rate les
Exxo – thanks for pointing out that “slipping the escort” is joke term for escaping the wife. My football banter days were well before marriage (or indeed girlfriends), but that makes a lot of sense.
I like to think the Airbus is a glorious moment of shared lucidity (perhaps even a fond shared memory of that time they swerved the Checkatrade), but the sheer obscurity of it really suggests to me that it’s a lapse back into isolation – a bit like Vince’s rambles in Bain of Constance but much more painful.
3 March 2022
EXXO
I wouldn’t say a joke term. A witty* comment that I’ve heard once or twice from football mates and I suspect NB will have heard it more than that.
*I’ve chosen the word generously because in isolation, it’s just funny rather than misogynistic. Obviously there’s a chance that other so-called banter might indicate that the person was a bit of a misogynist. In which case it would definitely seem less witty.
3 March 2022
Jeff dreadnought
Thanks everyone who’s helped explained the 30 Airbus chorus, which would otherwise have remained a mystery to me.
It would be nice to think it was a happy memory shared, but it doesn’t feel like that kind of song to me. Whether it’s a memory of his football hooligan days or something he may have seen on telly, it feels like a painful reminder that she’s losing him.
This was song that when I was first listening to the album stopped me in my tracks – especially the line about sewing his name into his shirt.
3 March 2022
Quickben
Having listened to it a number of times, it definitely has the feel of being a companion piece to Terminus, though in some ways it is darker and more sombre. Very much agree it is a farewell to a loved one who she can no longer care for and nurse adequately and she is worrying she may be seen as callous and uncaring; an evil nurse not feeding him properly. The other reading that theme lent itself to was of a woman who loved him enough to give him a final release via an overdose, which again would certainly prompt social judgement as an evil nurse. It feels ambiguous, perhaps deliberately so but once again NB paints something so evocative through his words – chapeau..
3 March 2022
Mr.X
@Paul F Different Steve O’Shaughnessy from the Cricketer, who is now a First Class Umpire.
Fun fact, the “century” Steve O’Shaughnessy scored was later not classed as the quickest ever first class hundred as it was in contrived circumstances. David Gower was bowling at one end along with one Test wonder, 1986-87 Ashes winner and former Head Selector, James Whittaker at the other for Leicestershire.
The difference with this one and Glen Chapple’s hundred v Glamorgan at Old Trafford is, in my opinion, negligible as that was also undoubtedly in contrived circumstances but not according to the record books.
This one was top scorer for Rochdale in 1989-90, when the Dale reached the F.A. Cup Fifth Round for the first time. He once also scored two goals in a game against Tranmere Rovers in Division Four at Spotland.
3 March 2022
Christie Malry
I think there’s a connection to be made between ‘the lanes’ here as a the scene of a moment of emotional reconnection and temporary escape from memory loss, and the two Lanes (Lingham and Limbo) in ‘Oblong of Dreams’ which represent escape from all the crap if everyday life.
3 March 2022
ALICE van der meer
No doubt NB10 is having a little smirk right now as we work out which Steve O’S he means.
3 March 2022
paul F
Yes, I’d gathered it wasn’t THAT Steve O’Shaughnessy, but wondered how frequently the man himself has to make that clear. But the connection sent me on a wiki safari where I was delighted to learn that if the century were considered genuine, it equalled a record held since 1920 by Percy Fender (a major character in the Bodyline TV series recently discussed here) and he received a congratulatory telegram afterwards from the 91 year old Fender.
3 March 2022
EXXO
Interesting that we’ve had more comments about its thematic connection to Terminus and Umberstone than to Bane of Constance, which not only is about dementia but also uses the same technique of the disconnected, obsessive chant from the dementia victim at the end.
MIdge Ure Looks Like a Milk Thief = Thirty Airbus Givin it the Big ‘un
3 March 2022
ThAt chiseller, iDRIS
Re: #68
I can remember whether I posted on this thread or the general album discussion but I definitely see this as more of a continuation of Bain of Constance than the others. I always took Harsh Times… to be about depression. There’s a nugget of hope in the lyric and the narrator seems to be trying to coax a smile out of Geraldine with the Large Hadron Collider joke. Obviously, either condition could manifest itself in the way described in the song but it feels to me like there’s a possibility of recovery which is what makes it such a wonderful, and to me rather comforting, song. Terminus, I see as more about the general effects of aging (delayed recovery from exercise, hernias, various other instances of ‘trouble down below’) with a peppering of references to empty nest syndrome (pushchair related confrontations, hands I once held no longer there.) which lifts it above other songs on the same topic. Depending on my mood, I can find it incredibly sad, or mildly uplifting as the character comes to terms with his situation and finds a new, possibly final, sense of liberation.
The characters in STE, on the other hand, could easily be Vince and Constance 8 years on, with the strange monologues having given way to quiz night outbursts and disorientated football chants. If it’s deliberate, it’s an amazing feat and it will certainly change the way I listen to BoC once TVY moves from constant rotation to shuffle.
3 March 2022
10 Pence Off Lenor
Clearly two references here.
1/ The 30 Airbus were giving it the big un in town then there is a sentence break followed by
2/ A plea to make football grounds all standing – End Seats
Clever undoubtedly but nothing much gets by me
3 March 2022
Drizzle
Ruthin Town, who are in the same league as Airbus UK Broughton, have a shed at one end which seats approx 30
3 March 2022
DUKE OF WESTMINSTER
I know others have read Bane of Constance as being about Vince’s dementia (like STE) and while there’s no wrong answer (save for the ones you would hear me lambast if you accepted a ride inside my head), I do not understand why people interpret it that way. Briefly, the evidence (or some of it, at least) for Vince not being a dementia sufferer includes:
1. the list of things referred to by Vince provides a lucid response to the question asked (i.e. it attempts to answer the specific question asked) so if there is any dementia involved it is not at an advanced stage in which language comprehension and formulation is lost;
2. Vince clearly recognises that the sort of information currently in his mind is not the sort of thing that Constance would be genuinely interested in (“I wold not blame you in the least if you cut short the flight”) – such insight is not consistent with advanced dementia;
3. Vince appreciates that the passing thoughts sparking through his mind are likely to be different if Constance takes another flight – again, the kind of insight not to be expected from someone with significant mental impairment from dementia;
4. The fact that Constance is asking the question to Vince about needing to know an answer as to what is on Vince’s mind because “We can’t continue in this way” suggests she is seeking information from him that will resolve their relationship problems – while that is consistent with the idea of her wanting get a better idea of what Vince thinks, it would be a very strange thing to ask of someone with dementia; and
5. the song works as a funny conceit if it is about Constance being keen to deepen the relationship by knowing everything about what Vince is thinking and Vince deflating the romantic intent by listing a series of maddeningly irrelevant nonsense rather than details about his feelings, but it does not work if it is about a woman pressing someone suffering from dementia about his mental inadequacies and memory problems – what’s funny about that, where would the pathos be?.
4 March 2022
EXXO
Perhaps the songwriter has moved on in his understanding of the issue, and finds a bit less comedy in it than eight years ago? I can’t remember (appropriately enough) if NB ever has clarified to me that the song was about dementia, but I do remember that I already thought it was when Geoff Davies clarified to Mick (Bobby Svarc) that it was.
4 March 2022
Jeff dReadnOught
Seems to me the main difference is Bain of Constance is more from the point of view of the sufferer while STE is more from the point of view of the carer.
Both manage to be deeply moving while not being in the slightest bit sentimental.
4 March 2022
DUKE OF WESTMINSTER
The furthest I’d be prepared to go (if someone gave me a really hard push) about Vince’s condition is that perhaps he could be in some kind of locked-in syndrome listening to Constance’s question and only able to answer with his internal thoughts. Even that, though, does not work as well in terms of the concept of the song as a scenario in which Vince has no relevant medical condition – i.e. the song is about the gulf between the hoped for internal thoughts of a lover and the random nonsense reality. If he has something like locked in syndrome then the idea is that Constance is telling Vince he has to reveal to her what she is thinking otherwise there needs to be changes and he responds with a series of unconnected strange things as internal thoughts. Not a very satisfying song idea. In any event, though, even that does not fit well with Vince’s comment about not blaming Constance if she cuts short the flight which seems to suggest Vince speaking as though he expects Constance to hear what he is saying and then to react.
4 March 2022
clown in a yaris
This song is completely devoid of everything i love about HMHB. Hate it .Have to skip it every time. It could have won me over if it was done in a more poetic and less literal way.
4 March 2022
Pirx The Purist
Each to his own, I suppose, but I think that – lyrics and music taken together – this may be the most ‘complete’ song they’ve ever done. Along with OoD, this is a sure-fire favourite for next years LFC.
4 March 2022
I, problem chimp
I’m interested by the ‘at last I’ve found you!’ line – is it the woman speaking – overjoyed that there is a ray of occasional sunshine and her beloved is at least momentarily back? Is it (given it’s a little buried in the background and the references to songs from their past) a memory of the beginning of their relationship surfacing which could therefore be uttered by either or both? Or is it the man, heartbreakingly seemingly lucid again, but actually remembering only a spot of Welsh football aggro?
As I wrote in the general chat, there’s enough structurally in both STE and OOD to work against having to see them as completely straight(forward) and therefore ‘anti-HMHB’ tracks, even if they do stand out against the majority of the band’s work…
5 March 2022
EXXO
Whose voice it is – he, her, omniscient narrator, unreliable narrator, Nigel Blackwell, etc, is up to you. But what has been found by that voice is indisputably the credo set out in the entire lyrics of ‘Sweet Mystery of Life.’
“Ah! I know at last the secret of it all;
All the longing, seeking, striving, waiting, yearning
The burning hopes, the joy and idle tears that fall!
For ’tis love, and love alone, the world is seeking,
And ’tis love, and love alone, that can repay!
‘Tis the answer, ’tis the end and all of living
For it is love alone that rules for aye!
Love, and love alone, the world is seeking,
For ’tis love, and love alone, that can repay!
‘Tis the answer, ’tis the end and all of living
For it is love alone that rules for aye!
5 March 2022
clown in a yaris
STE couldn’t hold a candle to OoD. OoD is a near master piece, beautiful and poetic in its imagery, definitely the best track on the album. I would put this as a more likely contender for the LFC. But, as someone once said, each to their own.
7 March 2022
Nagasaki Shinpads
I too think this is the best song on TVY..poignant and heartbreaking in its entirety.
Was thinking that “The Lanes” reference possibly a reference to the name of the Care Home linked to lucid episodes from Memory Lane(s)?
7 March 2022
John Anderson
I’ve had a while to digest the album and, like most of you, I’m thoroughly enjoying it. The standouts for me are In A Suffolk Ditch, Persian Rug Sale At The URC, Grafting Haddock In The George, Awkward Sean, Slipping The Escort and Midnight Mass Murder. I can’t wait to hear some or all of these songs performed live in Nottingham later this month.
“What about the final track?” I hear you cry. Don’t get me wrong it’s very good indeed but, from a totally subjective point of view, I like an HMHB song which contains lines and observations to which I can personally relate; coats on newel posts, once a year churchgoers, Chicory Tip, the hatred of continuity announcers, frustrated country singers; that sort of thing.
Obviously Nigel is a wonderfully evocative songwriter and fiercely proud of his local area but Oblong Of Dreams is so intensely personal to him that I find myself rather cast adrift from the references. I’m from Guildford and have only been to The Wirral twice (once for a game at Prenton Park and once for a party in Noctorum) so, lovely and heartfelt though the words are, it doesn’t really speak to me.
Overall I would like to doff my hat to Neil whose bass playing is magnificent throughout and seems to do most of the heavy lifting on this record. He’s up there with Steve Hanley and Peter Hook as a bassist around whom everything else falls into place. I think the elegaic Slipping The Escort is probably the musical highlight of the album, it reminds me of early Procol Harum, a band I’ve always loved (RIP Gary Brooker) and while thankfully I have no personal experience of the subject matter, the tale is beautifully told and should resonate with anyone.
This may not be a popular opinion, but I must say I find the sequencing of the tracks a little odd. The first eight of the fourteen songs make up only 44% of the running time, while the final three account for nearly a third of it. There are a trio of very short songs at the core, at least one of which I might have placed before OOD with STE put into the middle section. I think having STE and OOD back to back at the end makes the tail a little hard to digest, with the two longest and most conceptually demanding tracks side by side.
Minor quibbles though and, as I say, thoroughly subjective. It’s a brilliant record and yet another source of deep joy in a bleak world, from a band whose levels of consistency continue to be astonishingly high.
7 March 2022
EXXO
Well I doubt you’ll get all of your new favourites in Notts, John. Not unless you have time to practise keyboards with the band for Slipping the Escort
Meanwhile, you’ve only been to two places on the Wirral and if you’d said either you’d have won the place name bingo with closest to Woodchurch (and the estate, and the daffodils up by the school)!!
7 March 2022
cream cheese and chives
@ John Anderson Interesting point .
The bit that grabbed me from the start was the poor soul about whom NB was unsure of their destination-food bank, pharmacy, field track or indecency. It might just be me but that summed up several characters who roam the streets where I am.
Like many others I think Oblong is a masterpiece and coupled with Slipping The Escort makes for a fantastic finale to a belter of an lp.
Tickets ordered for Nottingham, I fancy Oblong might make the playlist but not Escort. Suffolk Ditch most likely will I would guess.
7 March 2022
DUKE OF WESTMINSTER
@ John Anderson – while the specifics of OoD are particular to places in Wirral, the sentiments are universal aren’t they? Giving significance to the every day in ordinary people’s lives (even in Guildford), the things that “flash upon that inward eye” – both the depressing and the uplifting.
7 March 2022
Janet from accounts
So not just me thinking of OoD as a growling modern take on Wordsworth…
That song is an absolute masterpiece, no question.
7 March 2022
John anderson
@Duke Of Westminster I agree the senitments are universal but so much of the song is place-specific that, to me, it doesn’t carry anywhere near as much significance as it would to someone familiar with the area.
I could write a lovely paean to Guildford namechecking Boney’s, RGS, Pete Martin, Merrow, the Head, Tunsgate Square and the 246, and you could all have a stab at working out what it means but I’m not sure it would strike a chord with everyone.
As I said, it’s stilI a great song and much of this is very subjective.
7 March 2022
paul f
My instinctive initial understanding of OoD was that the point of view transfers to the dead man’s spirit wandering across the Wirral – being his personal “paradise”. But the more I listen to it, the more I think it’s another example of Nigel stitching together two largely unrelated narratives into a single song.
7 March 2022
Janet from accounts
#88 – I see the opening part as yet another thing that his walk allows him to escape from. He’s been faced with questions about someone who has died, maybe on his street or in his town, perhaps during the heights of the pandemic, and that’s a pretty grim thing to confront, but he’s off on his walk and putting those things behind him and enjoying the countryside.
7 March 2022
dr Desperate
I know we haven’t started discussing it properly yet, but if somebody were to ask me “Is ‘Oblong of Dreams’ a ghost story or not?” I’d have to quote China Miéville: “Yes, it is a ghost story or not.”
7 March 2022
Chris The Siteowner
Once again: we’ll get there soon!
7 March 2022
HGANAVAC
Taking on board the input from here, I have tried to do the first draft of the Spanish translation over at Duone viro central.
7 March 2022
JEFF DREADNOUGHT
@John Anderson, I’ve lived pretty much my whole life in places I’m not from, but in spite of that – or more probably because of that – OoD gives me goosebumps.
7 March 2022
Darwin
Love the comments. Until I read them I could make no sense of the last refrain (lack of imagination maybe) But, competing with hundreds, this is in the top 5 of my all time favourites by this beat combo. Been through it with my Dad, so many friends and people are going through it now. Fucking extraordinary song…
8 March 2022
Declan
Is the last verse, a “rage against the dying of the light” sentiment.
The elderly parent lashing out at bingo, is a reaction to far bigger events he can’t control. Just like thirty footy fans in an empty stadium raging at the ref.
10 March 2022
EXXO
Dunno about a PBR thread, we need a helpline (“if you are affected by any of the issues in these songs …”). I do have a tendency to make it a bit about me, do ray me, me, me, but you don’t want to know what I just deleted, that I was about to post in PBRs …
10 March 2022
Chemtrail brian
Could the guy have been a legendary player or manager for Airbus, and now thirty of their fans are singing a tribute at a game, having heard of his demise?
Great song. Love the piano.
10 March 2022
DUKE OF WESTMINSTER
@ John Anderson. I was thinking about your comment again. Most HMHB songs have lots of place-specific details in them but there’s usually an ironic distance involved in the narration that makes them reasonably inclusive for a listener who knows little or nothing about the area in question. It may be that unironic, heartfelt, emotions described in the context of precise topography do not engage all listeners quite so much. I dunno. I suppose “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” contains no specific places but “Upon Westminster Bridge” is quite place-specific (the spirit of both seems to be in this song). Does the fact that the latter takes place in big ole, important London and not ordinary, everyday north Wirral make a difference?
@Paul F – I like the interpretation that when the song takes off as Nigel sings “Food Bank or Pharmacist” the bloke on the ground has just expired (“he’s out of it now”) and then the rest of the song, after “..out of it now”, is narrated by the dead man’s spirit heading off on an extended field-walk. There are a few minor hints at this “the field where she still walks”, “paradise” and “clouds part”. There’s nothing, though, to give greater credence to that slant than, say, it being about an NB-like jogger heading off on a favoured run after having provided brief assistance to some collapsed guy.
I know this is all on the wrong thread and apologies but if CtSO will hold off releasing the page for OoD then such things will happen.
10 March 2022
paul f
Agreed, your grace. It was how I initially interpreted it – but it doesn’t stand up to greater lyrical scrutiny, which is, of course, what this site is all about.
10 March 2022
THE BASTARD IN THE HAT
@I, Problem Chimp #78 — regarding “At last I’ve found you”:
Exxo’s comment #79 would make even more sense with the start of the lyrics to SMOL: “Ah! Sweet mystery of life, at last I’ve found thee”.
I think the “found” is a counterpart to “losing him twice” earlier. The whole song is constantly switching between past, present and future — really remarkably often. One of the losses is occurring now, and the second is in the future. As others have said, the “found” moment could be a flashback to the lanes or an occasional meeting or a future memory. For me, the switching could be a reflection of disoriented minds — as much hers as his — and this helps me to accept the final chant: maybe it’s meant to be disjointed and confusing.
Musically, I agree (#82) STE is a highlight of the album, Neil’s bass is central, and (#26) the drum build-up is great. The strange chords (#46) fit in with the disjointed theme.
10 March 2022
John anderson
@Duke Of Westminster I think you have very eloquently captured how I feel about the song. But I hope you don’t think I’m one of those southerners who thinks civilisation stops north of Watford. I spent three very happy years in Stoke-On-Trent and love the north of England. My wife worked at the Liverpool Playhouse for a while in the 1980s and it’s one of my favourite cities.
In fact while she was there, a lad called David Lloyd applied for a job but didn’t get it. I was annoyed as I would have loved to have met the HMHB keyboard player.
While I’m name dropping, a couple of years ago I spent a fantastic day in Liverpool in the company of Pete Wylie. Top bloke and seemed to know NB pretty well.
10 March 2022
Mark
Could the ‘30 airbus’ be a flight to Switzerland for euthanasia purposes??
10 March 2022
Third rate les
I read up on Bobby Darin. It’s odd the way the song pairs him up with one of his songs rather than his soul mate, but reading his story you can see why. Ouch.
Always struggled with most versions of “Mack The Knife” apart from the grainy recording of Bertolt Brecht singing it himself. They are either overly operatic (am a big opera fan but I loathe operatic singing where it doesn’t belong – see also Porgy and Bess) or they’re the English-language jokey swing version, like Darin’s. It’s a song for smokey cellars and dark mitteleuropa backstreets, not Vegas cabarets.
13 March 2022
parsfan
At the Brighton gig in 2013:
Nigel’s opening comment “…And you get a free Parker Pen with every quote” was from one of those Michael Parkinson insurance/pension adverts.
Ta Roger
13 March 2022
EXXO
@Les. What I love about that line in the context of the whole five lines is that it gives us a real insight into the probable writing process, the way the lines came together, with the first “ife” rhyme looking like the last box to be filled – I can imagine it was probably unfilled for a long time – and yes, something leftfield being the outcome, Bobby Darin, a philanderer, deliberately chosen because he didn’t have what is being sung about here.
@Paul (Parsfan) and @Roger. 🙂
13 March 2022
Paul f
Darin was of course one of the “Bobbies” (Vinton, Vee etc) that Jerry Lee Lewis considered the embodiment of all that was wrong with Rock’n’Roll by the early 60s, and why he was so happy to see The Beatles sweep them all away.
14 March 2022
Free parker pen
Is it “ conduct reports “ plural ? Since there are two comments that follow.
Sadly I can remember them being “ mixed “ as well.
15 March 2022
dr Desperate
I had “conduct reports” (because it is).
15 March 2022
That chiseller, idris
And I had ‘conduct report’s’, as in ‘[the] conduct report is’.
15 March 2022
CARRIE ANNE
Lads, we’ve been had!
Astounded to discover, as I reach the age of eligibility, that it is not a free Parker pen at all, and hasn’t been for years. It’s a free Schaeffer pen.
That and the other 4 “stupendous stats about the SunLife free pen” –
https://www.sunlife.co.uk/articles-guides/your-money/sunlife-free-pen/
The sour cream and chive debacle all over again.
15 March 2022
paul f
I think the switch to Sheaffer (which I’ve just discovered is the correct spelling) is quite a recent development.
15 March 2022
dr Desperate
Now that’s disappointing (especially as Shaeffer would have fitted the metre equally well).
15 March 2022
CARRIE ANNE
The article I linked too is nearly 7 years old
15 March 2022
paul f
Interesting – perhaps you don’t get a pen at all these days?
15 March 2022
EXXO
Well it looks like i was right then about the “Mack the Knife” rhyme taking a long time to come up with 🙂
15 March 2022
I, problem chimp
@Dr D #112
You’d lose the alliteration, though…
15 March 2022
woodnoggin
I hear only a singular conduct report, with a prominently aspirated T at the end, as often occurs with a Scouse accent.
15 March 2022
Chemtrail brian
Can I raise the possibility of “the ‘is he?’ years” instead of “the easy years”? I.e. the years where there was still some ambiguity, doubt and hope.
It sounds (to my non-merseyside ears) more like that than “easy”, and I don’t think the preceding years, with the onset of his dementia, would be easy.
16 March 2022
JIM IN THE ANTIPODES
Excellent chat regarding these excellent (albeit) challenging lyrics. While I accept the version “At last I’ve found you!”, I have to say that I hear “I’m lost, I’ve found you!”. This doesn’t fit with any of the well-noted cross-references, but it does fit with the contradictory and frustrating nature of dementia….. just a thought
17 March 2022
duke of westminster
Is NB also alluding to Rock and Roll Heaven recorded by the Righteous Brothers in 1974 with the Bobby Darin reference – “and Bobby gave us Mack the Knife”? Songs about loss?
17 March 2022
Dull Head Del
IThe line is definitely ‘At last I found you’ but when I first heard it I thought it was ‘I must have phoned you’. Like he had picked up the phone but by the time it was answered he had forgotten he had made a call.
17 March 2022
Xpyda
I have listened and listened and I still have no idea what this song is about. If it’s about football then that would explain it because I know nor care to know anything about football. It sounds like it should be dignitas but now I type this I’m thinking football shirts and transfer season and the deliberate lack of humour being something beyond my ken kickyball wise?
I haven’t the time to read all the preceding comments, which I trust would contain these answers, so could someone recap and tag me please?
For what it’s worth the *only* thing I have ever liked about football is the biscuits’ songs about it.
That shows what great songwriters they are.
I’m 61 now and my 7 year old is going to football practice.
Share my pain.
17 March 2022
Xpyda
Again, sorry if I’m late to the chase but I remember an old pun, probably on a radio show , *possibly* Barrie Cryer “oh sweet Miss Terry of Life (magazine) at last…..you know the rest.
A convoluted pun about a search for a mystery journalist. They also did “onwards crisp bin solderers” and something like “super fragile expelled motives(?) causes Halitosis.
Please tell me this isn’t all cognitive dissonance.
17 March 2022
Pirx the purist
It would have been Frank Muir or Denis Norden at the end of an edition of “My Word!” on Radio 4. They would end each week’s show by each spinning a yarn ostensibly to explain a well-known phrase or quote. The result was always a well-turned pun on the actual phrase given.
A number of the stories were collected into anthologies which sold very well in about late-70s – mid-80s.
18 March 2022
dr Desperate
I had those books (alas, no longer), including one titled ‘You Can’t Have Your Kayak and Heat It’. A CD was released in 2005, the track listing of which suggests little crossover with Biscuitworld, apart perhaps from ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’, which was rendered “Soup, a cauli, fridge, elastic, eggs, peas, halitosis”.
For anyone interested, that story pun model is known as a ‘feghoot’, named after an unhelpful Scrabble hand by its originator, the American SF writer Reginald Bretnor. His character Ferdinand Feghoot worked for the Society for the Aesthetic Re-Arrangement of History, travelling in time using a device represented as the “)(“, which one assumes may have from time to time gone on the blink (and we’re back in the room).
18 March 2022
clown in a yaris
Have tried to persevere with this track, alas to no avail. How anyone can like it is beyond me. I’m as mad about the Biscuits as anyone, but this is a dreadful dirge.
Sorry boys.
20 March 2022
CARDIACS AND A BEER
My (perhaps somewhat fanciful) read of the song is that it culminates in him coming back to her, ever briefly –
26 March 2022
cardiacs and a beer
– “occasional sunshine / where clarity reigns… at last I’ve found you!” – except the “joke” is that where this happens is at the football she’s taken him to, where this sublime moment is interrupted by the thirty shouting supporters.
26 March 2022
Bulbatross
The guy going into “the care home ” is an ex footy fan
(possible hooligan). Much of the song details where he is now -in relation to what his wife is doing for him.
He is transported back in his mind to a time when he was actively partaking in the footy scene. Some other random facts about Jeanette Mcdonald and Co. flash through his head before he starts gollering for Airbus.
I believe “Slipping the escort” refers to when away fans would sneak away from the horse back coppers leading them to the ground
1 April 2022
BarahirNZ
Does ‘Thirty Airbus’ refer to the two of them on an A330 flight to Switzerland – with only one return ticket? Giving it large in the best seats up the front of the bus? Money no object now, as they don’t sew pockets into shrouds.
1 April 2022
TRANSIT FULL OF keith
For me it’s a bit different, it’s more about the increasing gulf between them – the Nelson Eddy bit is her trying to get through to him by talking about old songs, and the Thirty Airbus bit is the very different place he’s gone to in his mind. ‘Slipping the escort’ refers to both the fans getting into the home end, but also to him going AWOL (both literally and mentally) from her.
Its also possible that in his confused walkabout he actually joins a bunch of fans, crashes the home end, and that’s where she finds him; or she finds him sitting in the empty football ground reliving that in his mind.
2 April 2022
EXXO
It’s interesting Keith that you take the the third person narrative of the song to be an omniscient one, and you have her the couple conversing about those songs. That’s quite possible I suppose, but to me it’s very much a third person song where it’s the narrator who introduces the McDonald/Eddy metaphor for their relationship and it’s the narrator who, in observing her love for the old man, has learned the credo from ‘Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life’ about love being everything. That’s what’s so marvellous about the strange Mack the Knife line – that it gives away the fact that the whole song is written to build up to what the mystery of life that the narrator has found is.
And it’s quite possibly the narrator who is then embarrassed to actually state the credo of love and instead debunks it with the ‘Midge Ure looks like a milk thief’ type chant at the end.
2 April 2022
dr Desperate
Yes, the ‘Mack the Knife’ line is marvellous, as gloriously unexpected as “there’s often more intrigue in the pool games”.
Still, I can’t help hoping that one day Nigel might change it in a live environment to (the arguably more relevant) “And Freddie Frinton had ‘Meet the Wife'”.
11 April 2022
HGANAVAC
This is particularly poignant for me as my dad died from Alzheimer’s in a care home. The toughest lines are “no preparation for losing him twice”, and “occasional sunshine”.
I still remember the moments of that sunshine when for certain lucid moments there was a brief return. I also remember knowing the end was close when he said he couldn’t be bothered to listen to his iPod, he was responsible for all of my introductions to music and once his love for it left him, he was ready to leave the Oblong of Dreams.
12 April 2022
Don Fabio
I love this forum, but…… Is not Nigel’s genius the ability to finish a tune with an element of the absurd. There’s a Persian Rug Sale – how does it possibly relate to the initial lyrics? Julio sings? You can’t put your foot up? Suspected murderer in Tupac….? Embrace the absurd – it’s why we love them
15 April 2022
EXXO
Yes, totally. Trying to make a coherent story out of the whole song is arguably the absurdest thing.
Nigel sees sign at the URC for an absurd (but real) concept. It sparks a mash-up of absurd images. A dream? A series of dreams? Yet another statement about the difficulty of writing a coherent song? Whatever, it’s beautiful.
15 April 2022
Don Fabio
That’s how I see it. That’s why they are genius.
15 April 2022
Coops
Might have been said earlier, not read all the comments, but is the “if she can hold that needle steady” line about euthenasia? If so it makes this song extraordinary.
26 April 2022
EXXO
It’s isn’t really about euthanasia no, but it’s a wonderful line that I think always retains that ghost of the first time you heard it, when yes, for a fraction of a second you wondered what she was doing with the needle. The unsteady voice for the unsteady hand … just breathtaking stuff.
27 April 2022
TRANSIT FULL OF keith
Absolutely that – she’s sewing the name on because he goes walkabout, but the hint of darker thoughts crowding in seems quite deliberate.
27 April 2022
Mark V
Great discussion certainly at first. I’m in this now. My wife has just gone into care and ‘losing him twice’ is powerful stuff when you face it for real. I’ve just bought a load of iron on name tags because clothes get mixed up in the laundry. ‘At last I’ve found you’ is a lyric from the song ‘Ah sweet mystery of life’ during which he used to hold her steady. Not sure about ‘the lanes’ but is sounds like a shared happy place. ’30 Airbus’ chant feels like him in his own head lost in memories.
27 April 2022
Murderous gIraffe
“Sweet mystery of life, at last I’ve found you”. I see this as her epiphany. All those years together and it’s only when she’s about to lose him that it all comes into focus. It’s like a total perspective vortex.
27 April 2022
EXXO
It might be a perspective vortex, but if it’s her epiphany it’s certainly a massive jump in perspective. Can you think of another instance in HMHB lyrics where a 3rd person narration suddenly jumps to an “I?” OK, it’s quoting song lyrics, so that might allow it not to be such a jump – she might be quoting or singing. But my money’s on it being the narrator’s epiphany.
28 April 2022
Mark V
The Lanes is the name of a bowling alley near Bristol that used to become a dance hall in the evening. There is a place in Wrexham called Tenpin but I don’t know anything about it’s history.
29 April 2022
Pirx The Purist
It’s in the Eagles Meadow shopping centre (aka the Debenhams Memorial Wind Tunnel), one of a long line of ‘retail experiences’ which has torn the heart out of the town in the last thirty-odd years.
(For further bloviating on the same point, see this piece and its follow-up piece for what the Curse Of Bigness has done to even substantial villages)
29 April 2022
Parsfan
Maybe they used to go ten pin bowling after work.
29 April 2022
Steve Maddern
In psychiatric institutions/care homes/nursing homes, an escort is assigned to a patient/resident who is at risk of absconding or coming to harm. ‘Slipping the escort’ to means escaping from the assigned staff member.
‘Back in the lanes’ – the picture I get is of the two of them remembering playing in the lanes around their homes as children.
As for ’30 Airbus’… evidently football related, but how it relates to the story is a subject for wonderful conjecture.
1 May 2022
Chris The Siteowner
Notes from Paddy Shennan’s interview with NB10:
On the surface it’s a straightforward story about a wife coping with her husband’s dementia and putting him in a home. But there is a back story in that he was a hooligan, of sorts, in his younger days and still quite likes to keep up with what’s going on in the world of hooliganism – but there isn’t any suggestion of this until you get to the last line (which I had knocking around for ages).
I had the title first, which is a double meaning thing. Slipping the escort was always about when fans came out of a station and if you were really looking to have a fight with opposing fans you’d be looking to get away from the main set of supporters and the police escort so you can have a scrap up a back street with 30 of their lot, or whatever. But the term can also mean you’re losing it, both mentally and physically.
The line “Ah! Sweet mystery of life, at last I’ve found you!” is actually sung by the patient – the bloke. It’s not the wife or narrator. His sweet mystery of life is having a big scrap at the football. That is what he loved. In the song “Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life” by Nelson Eddy, it’s love he’s referring to.
Take away the last bit of the song, the rest of it is brought about simply because – and this is ridiculous but it’s true – there’s an episode of Dad’s Army where they get trapped on the pier, and they’ve got nothing to eat because Pike’s forgotten to bring the food. There’s a chocolate machine there, and they have one of those claw crane things – but the chocolate is made of cardboard. They’re all really angry and all that and Warden Hodges ends up with them and he gets pissed because Frazer has some whisky and Warden Hodges steals it. And he starts singing – and for years I wondered “What’s he singing there?” I loved it and it made me laugh. And he’s singing “Ah! Sweet Mystery Of Life” by Nelson Eddy. I investigated that song and bought it on CD by Nelson Eddy. He did it as a duet with Jeanette MacDonald, so I took the basis of that and thought “Right, I’m going to write a song around it”.
Initially, I was writing it with the intention of getting a girl to sing the song, and I literally changed it about a week before I went into the studio. The whole song should be, and initially was, “I, I, I”…”If I could hold that needle steady” and so on. But I ended up changing it because I didn’t have the bottle to ask, for instance, Eliza Carthy, who I don’t know, or someone else who I DO know – Niamh Rowe from The Sundowners, a band in West Kirby. Niamh doesn’t have any idea I was going to ask her (but she couldn’t have done it anyway because she was having a baby at the time).
So it should be a female singing it – and the first line, with a female vocal, would have been “The days we feared are here”. I had to change it at the last minute because I knew I wasn’t going to get anyone to sing it, and that I would be singing it. I became the narrator. It therefore became “he” and “she”. But I’ve made a mistake in the song and no one has pulled me up on it – no one’s noticed. And I’ll come back to that later…
At the very end – “Ah! Sweet mystery of life” – that’s him, because he’s found out about the “30 Airbus”. Whether this bit actually happened is open to the listener’s interpretation, but it’s the sort of thing he would have looked for over the weekend, on a Sunday – certainly when he was compos mentis. He would have been excited about it and told his mates – “Did you hear about that at the weekend? 30 Airbus were in the Town End seats” kind of thing. What’s happening at the end of the song is – he’s finally gone and whether or not the incident has happened, it’s certainly happened in his head. He’s getting excited, the nurses are trying to hold him down and his wife is shuffling off up the corridor in tears because she’s thinking “That’s it now, I’ve lost him totally”.
But any love was just a normal man and wife relationship.
“Occasional sunshine/Where clarity reigns/And memories are mutual/And we’re back in the lanes…”
This should have ended “THEY’RE back in the lanes” – because I had been talking about “he” and “she” – but I didn’t change it. When I changed everything else, I somehow overlooked that and didn’t make it “they’re back in the lanes”, which it should be to fit the rest of what the lyrics became because I didn’t get a girl to sing it. Although I can get away with it in the way that if I’m the storyteller I can say “And we’re back in the lanes” (with them).
The lanes, themselves?
In my mind’s eye, there is a specific lane but as it’s not about me it doesn’t really matter. For the record, though, the lane is called Marsh Lane and runs between Lever Causeway and Storeton Woods. I visualise the area where it bends just below the woods.
The location of the Town End seats?
No ground in particular. I wasn’t thinking of a specific ground.
I’m reminded of the sweet piano/keyboards sound in Skin Deep by The Stranglers at times during this song.
Yes, there is piano at the start, before the lyrics come in, and keyboards at the end of the song. Both are played by Ben, who did the brass on Big Man Up Front. The piano used is the same one which Chris Martin played “Yellow” on!
4 May 2022
Andrew Harrison
Are we 100% sure it’s not “DIRTY Airbus” cos that’s what it sounds like to me? The taunting chant of the home fans after Airbus have shown up with a game plan of shithousery but a poor away complement? Must admit I will have to listen more closely.
7 May 2022
EXXO
We listen in accents as well as speak in them, so for what it’s worth from those of us who are local, there’s no doubt. Not that there’s been any doubt previously from anyone who is not familiar with the accent either.
Anyway, the interview seems to have been based on both parties reading through these threads and then discussing them, so NB would have pointed out such a major discrepancy had it been there (though not necessarily all discrepancies).
NB said basically that the old fella is outraged at the idea of the successful invasion of the home end at his club, whether real or imaginary.
7 May 2022
garstanger toestub
I might be possible that this is the most tear-worthy song since that bad haired astronomer and his dentist, engineer and artist mates gave us “These are the days of our lives”
To quote the venerable late, lamented Robert of Ball, “I’m fillin’ up!”
26 May 2022
Rhombus of nightMares
Late to the party, I know. Firstly, this is the most extraordinary song – their best ever moment in the studio…until the following song.
Just one thought about 30 Airbus. The “Town“ End for me refers to the club name, not the end of the ground. Back in the day, I’d say “Arsenal fans got in the United end”, not “Arsenal fans got in the Stretford End” (yes, I’m aware Arsenal fans weren’t exactly known for their hoolies, but bear with me).
It’s the thing of beauty, either way.
8 June 2022
EXXO
I nodded along at first there, but then I thought it has always been rare that away fans have the whole of an end, especially back in the day, and “the [name of club] end” at home ground only makes sense in certain limited contexts.
8 June 2022
Telford Biccy
Who’d thought the line “30 Airbus giving it the big ‘un in the town end seats” could send shivers down the spine?
Outstanding album.
19 June 2022
worc0257
Fortuitously, finished sewing nametapes (well, ironing them in, to be completely honest) in my son’s school shirts while playing this. Dementia = “hideous inverted childhood” (LARKIN) That’s what I thought, anyway.
But then I’m from Coventry, and know what a batch is.
Not sure there’s a better HMHB song, after twenty or so listens.
When I hear there’s a new HMHB album, I always look forward to track two: very reliable.
16 September 2022
Brumbiscuit
@WORC0257: I started a job in Cov in 2015. One Saturday shift, when all was quiet, a workmate came in and said he was doing a batch run. I honestly thought he was going to the on-site printers, so declined his kind offer, not knowing he was off to fetch bacon rolls
16 September 2022
BOBBY SVARC
Cob County starts about Wolvey.
16 September 2022
john
We listen in accents as well as speak in them, so for what it’s worth from those of us who are local, there’s no doubt. Not that there’s been any doubt previously from anyone who is not familiar with the accent either.
Anyway, the interview seems to have been based on both parties reading through these threads and then discussing them, so NB would have pointed out such a major discrepancy had it been there (though not necessarily all discrepancies).
NB said basically that the old fella is outraged at the idea of the successful invasion of the home end at his club, whether real or imaginary.
26 April 2023
Exxo
Any particular reason why you’ve copied comment 150 (answering 149’s question), John?
26 April 2023